The Mirrors of Downing Street: Some Political Reflections, by Anon: A Gentleman With a Duster
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The Mirrors of Downing Street: Some Political Reflections, by Anon: A Gentleman With a Duster. G.P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1921. Edition: Fourth impression. Hardcover, 171 pages. Maroon cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Illustrated with 13 plates, being portraits of the subjects of the biographical studies.

Condition: Very Good (no jacket). Light bumping to upper and lower spine ends. Top of page edges dark from shelf-dust (or else a faded publisher's stain). Major flaw is a missing first free end-paper, which has been cut out, leaving the second end-paper scored along the joint. No other marks in book except a small sticker for "The Norman, Remington Co., Baltimore" on the inside back cover. Binding relaxed, but all pages secure.

Contents: An insider look at the personalities and characters of the men who formed British international policy during and immediately after World War I and shaped the history of the early twentieth century.

At the time of its publication, both Britains and Americans believed that their two countries had a joint responsibility for shaping the affairs of the world to assure peace and liberty for future generations, and it was felt that the character of the most influential British politicians should be of interest to intelligent Americans.

These character sketches by an anonymous author are sometimes brutal, but fascinating to any student of history who knows that the greatest test for many of these men would lie in their future, as they brought their country up to and through World War II. The sketches include:

• Mr. Lloyd George -- ". . . Who does not feel the greatness of Napoleon? -- and who does not suspect the shallowness of Mr. Lloyd George?"
• Lord Carnock -- "There is no living politician who watched so intelligently the long beginnings of the war or who knew so certainly in the days of tension that war had come, as this modest and gracious gentleman whose devotion to principle and whose quiet faith in the power of simple honour had outwitted the chaotic policy and the makeshift diplomacy of the German long before the autumn of 1914."
• Lord Fisher --- "No man I have met ever gave me so authentic a feeling of originality as this dare-devil of genius, this pirate of public life, who more than any other Englishman saved British democracy from a Prussian domination."
• Mr. Herbert Henry Asquith -- "He has never had an idea of his own. The 'diffused sagacity' of his mind is derived from the wisdom of other men. He is a cistern and not a fountain."
• Lord Northcliffe -- "It cannot be said that his mind works in any direction. It is not a trained mind. It does not know how to think and cannot support the burden of trying to think. It springs at ideas and goes off with them in haste too great for reflection. . . . But he has leaps of real genius."
• Mr. Arthur Balfour -- "He began life well, but he has slackness in his blood and no vital enthusiasm in his heart. His career has been a descent. He has taken things -- ethically and industrially -- easily, too easily."
• Lord Kitchener -- ". . . This greatness of his, not being the full greatness of a complete man, and having neither the support of a keen intellect nor the foundations of a strong moral character, wilted in the atmosphere of politics, and in the end, left him with little but the frayed cloak of his former reputation.
• Lord Robert Cecil -- "From the very beginning of the War Lord Robert Cecil perceived that the need of the nation was not for a great political leader, but for a great moral leader. . . . He numbered himself among those anxiously scanning the horizon for such a leader. He should have been instead answering the inarticulate cry of the people for that leader."
• Mr. Winston Churchill -- "There still clings to his career that element of great promise and unlimited uncertainty which from his first entrance into politics has interested both the public and the House of Commons. He has disappointed his admirers on several occasions, but not yet has he exhausted their patience or destroyed their hopes."
• Lord Haldane -- "His faults are a too generous confidence in the good sense of democracy and a lack of impassioned energy. He is too much a thinker, too little a warrior. Unhappily he is not an effective speaker, and his writing is not always as clear as his ideas."
• Lord Rhondda -- "For the best part of his manhood Lord Rhondda was a political failure. The House of Commons, which prides itself on its judgment of men, treated him as a person of no importance. . . He was never offered by his political eladers during all the long years of his patient service even an under-secretaryship. . . .This was the man who saved the nation from one of its greatest perils during perhaps the most critical period of the war."
• Lord Inverforth -- "It is a fortunate thing for this country that a man of so remarkable a genius for organizations as Lord Inverforth should be found willing to serve the national interests in spite of an almost daily comapign of abuse directed against his administration."
• Lord Leverhulme -- "I suppose that nobody will now dispute that Lord Leverhulme is easily the foremost industrialist, not merely in the British Isles, buti n the world. I can think of no one who approaches him in the creative faculty. Not even America, the country of big men and big businesses, has produced a man of this truly colossal stature."