[The _Hamburger Fremdenblatt_, in an article on our Ambassador at
Petrograd, ascribes his success as a diplomat to his passion for golf--
"if one can speak of passion in connection with this cold game of
meadow billiards." "The conditions," it goes on to say, "in which this
rather tiresome game is played do really produce the qualities
necessary for any statesmanlike or diplomatic work.... Silent, tough,
resigned, unbroken ... the good golfer walks round his field, keeps his
eye on the ball and steers for his goal.... Sir George Buchanan walked
round the whole golf field of Europe for years until at last he was
able in Petrograd to hurl the ball into the goal."]
Oft have I wondered as my weapon's edge
Disintegrated solid chunks of greenery,
Or as my pillule flew the bounding hedge
Into outlying sections of the scenery,
What moral value might accrue
From billiards played beneath the blue.
Little I fancied when I topped the sphere
And on its candour left a coarse impression,
Or in the bed of some revolting mere
Mislaid three virgin globes in swift succession,
That I was learning how to grip
The rudiments of statesmanship.
Yet so it was. I schooled myself to gaze
Upon the object with a firmly glued eye,
And, though I moved by strange and devious ways,
To keep in view the goal, or _finis ludi_,
And ever let my language be
The language of diplomacy.
Thus BALFOUR learned the politician's game,
And thus LLOYD GEORGE was trained to be a Premier;
Thence many a leader who has leapt to fame
Got self-control, grew harder, tougher, phlegmier,
Reared in the virtues which prevail
At Walton Heath and Sunningdale.
Golf being then the source of so much good,
I own my conscience suffers certain wrenches
Recalling how the links of Chorley Wood
Have seen me on the Sabbath carving trenches,
Where Tommies might be taught to pitch
The deadly bomb from ditch to ditch.
For I reflect that my intruding spade,
That blocked the foursome and debarred the single,
May well have cheeked some statesman yet unmade,
Some budding HOGGE, some mute inglorious PRINGLE;
And that is why my shovel shrinks
From excavating other links.