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 IX.

FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE.

T is now several years since I first chanced to meet Rear-Admiral Maxse at a Reform conference; but, until quite recently, I have had no opportunity of verifying my early impressions. These, with certain reservations, were of a most favorable kind; and they have been abundantly confirmed on closer acquaintance.

Maxse is, what so very few Englishmen are, an idealist in politics, a singularly poor hand at a compromise. Instead of accommodating his theory to the facts, he strives to bend the facts to his theory. With sailor-like single-mindedness, he has an awkward trick—awkward in a politician—of making use of language in order to express his meaning, instead of concealing it, as a good wire-puller should. His more candid political friends, consequently, complain that he cannot be got, even at critical electoral seasons, to recognize the advantage of calling a spade an elongated agricultural implement. Hence the damning suspicion which obtains in certain quarters that the admiral is, with all his ability, "impracticable." An Englishman, and not "practical"!

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