Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/42

 I don't believe that is possible either.' The applause rang out again at this double hit.... I remember him again in the House on a hot night in June. A dull debate on Foreign Affairs was in progress. The recent travels of Mr. Roosevelt through Egypt and his lecture to England at the Guildhall reception were under discussion. Kettle let loose upon the famous Teddy the barbed irony of his wit. I recall only one of his biting phrases: 'This new Tartarin of Tarascon who has come from America to shoot lions and lecture Empires."

Another distinguished critic writing of him says: "His darting phrases made straight for the heart of unintelligence—sometimes also, no doubt, for the heart of intelligence. When he sat in Parliament he summed up the frailty of Mr. Balfour in yielding to the Tariff Reformers in the phrase: 'They have nailed their leader to the mast.'"

He could be caustic to a degree. "I don't mind loquacity," he once remarked, "so long as it is not Belloc-quacity."

"Mr. Long," he said another time, "knows a sentence should have a beginning, but he quite forgets it should also have an end."

In a flashing epigram he once summed up the difference between the two great English Parties: "When in office, the Liberals forget their principles and the Tories remember their friends. Asked once to define a Jingo, he replied: "A Jingo