Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties can be
brought face to face. I can differ from a man much more radically when
he is not in the room than I can when he is in the room, because then
the awkward thing is he can come back at me and answer what I say. It is
always dangerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself.
Therefore, we must insist in every instance that the parties come into
each other's presence and there discuss the issues between them, and not
separately in places which have no communication with each other. I
always like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an Englishman of
the past generation, Charles Lamb. He stuttered a little bit, and once
when he was with a group of friends he spoke very harshly of some man
who was not present. One of his friends said: "Why, Charles, I didn't
know that you knew so and so." "O-o-oh," he said, "I-I d-d-don't; I-I
can't h-h-h hate a m-m-man I-I know." There is a great deal of human
nature, of very pleasant human nature, in the saying. It is hard to hate
a man you know. I may admit, parenthetically, that there are some
politicians whose methods I do not at all believe in, but they are jolly
good fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong kind of politics
to me, I would love to be with them.