Lord Curzon’s death

With the death of Lord Curzon, public life in England has lost one of its most striking figures. Opinion may and does differ as to the measure of success achieved by him in several offices, which he had successively filled both at home and abroad for over 30 years, but no one can deny that to all of them he brought an amount of zeal, energy, industry and intrepidity which has seldom been surpassed. Perhaps the parts of his life for which he will be most remembered are the seven years of his Indian Viceroyalty and the period during which he was England’s Foreign Secretary. A short obituary notice like this is scarcely the place where one can critically notice either of these parts. Suffice it to say that his Viceroyalty was a brilliant failure and his period of office as Foreign Secretary was characterised by more than one monumental blunder. If in spite of this his death will cause widespread regret, the reason partly is that a man is not only more than his words, but also more than his deeds. This is particularly true in our own case in which the distance of time that divides us from Lord Curzon’s two terms of office as Viceroy permits a profitable lenity. We see only too clearly today what those immediately affected by his policy and measures could only dimly apprehend, that the worst blunders of Lord Curzon in this country were really a blessing in disguise, that without the hard blows he struck, India might still have continued in the self-satisfied state of contented subjection in which Lord Curzon found her.