“You cannot do anyone more good than by trying unsuccessfully to do him an injury,” was one of the aphorisms of Lord Dalling (Sir Henry Bulwer); and it occurred to me forcibly on one occasion when I went to stay with my very great friend, Henry Labouchere (the proprietor of _Truth_). On the way I had been reading a peculiarly venomous attack on me in his paper; and when he greeted me as affectionately as ever, I showed it to him, saying: “Don’t put your arm on my shoulder! Read that damned thing there!” Labouchere glanced at it and replied, “Where would you have been if I hadn’t persistently maligned you?” When I was with him at his villa at Florence, he used to smoke the most beastly cigarettes at ten a penny, yet he left over a million sterling, and was generous to absurdity to those he loved. He had none but Italian servants; he told me he was always extremely polite to them for the knife came so easy to them. He said he didn’t realise this until, after he had had some words with an English friend, his Italian gardener, who had overheard the altercation, asked Labouchere if he would like him (the gardener) to deal with his friend, and he tapped the stiletto in his waistband. His own wit was as ready as his gardener’s stiletto. On one occasion he was at Cologne railway station, and the Custom House Officer was turning his portmanteau inside out. Labouchere had a telegraph form in his pocket; he wrote out a telegram with a stylographic pen and handed it to the official who was standing behind the Custom House Officer and told him it was a Government telegram. This was the telegram: PRINCE BISMARCK, BERLIN. Can’t dine with you to-night. Missed train through a damned ass of a Custom House Officer. Will let you have his name. LABOUCHERE, Cologne. They offered him a special train. Labouchere had never seen Bismarck in his life. This was the occasion on which Labouchere was reprimanded by the Foreign Office for his delay in taking up his appointment as attaché at St. Petersburg. His excuse was that the money allowed him only permitted his travelling by railway as far as Cologne; the rest of the way he walked. This book would be incomplete if I did not draw attention to the great debt the nation owes to three men yet unmentioned in this volume. Mr. George Lambert, M.P., twice refused office and sacrificed his political prospects and with a glorious victory sustained the whole Government effort to kick him out of Parliament; but he conquered with a magnificent majority of over two thousand! Why? Because after serving for over seven years in the Admiralty he could speak of his own knowledge that the War administration and the fighting Sea Policy were shamefully effete.