He adopted the label with pride some time in the middle ’nineties, when he was already a mature, determined and unalterable man of twenty-eight. He was a fervent patriot throughout the Boer War. He has, since December, 1905, spent a fount of energy that would have wrecked the physique of ten average men in denouncing such things as Education Bills, Old Age Pensions, the Reform of the House of Lords, Home Rule--in brief, the Government--or, as he always called it, “_this_ Government.” And since the beginning of the war he has demonstrated--proving every statement of the _Times_ by the evidence of the _Daily Mail_--that there will never be any truth or sanity in the world until the whole German race is beaten to its perjured knees (his metaphors sometimes have an effect of concentration); until it is so thrashed, scourged, humiliated, broken and defeated (a barrage is necessarily redundant) that the last remaining descendants of the Prussian shall crawl, pitifully exposed and humbled, about the earth, begging God and man for forgiveness. My friend is, in fact, the perfect type of what is known to psycho-analysts as the extrovert. He has never questioned himself, never doubted the infallibility of his own gospel, never known fear. He does not understand the meaning of the word introspection, and feels nothing but pity for a man who halts between two opinions. He divides all mankind into two categories--splendid fellows and damned fools--although I have found the suggestion of a third division in his description of a querulous Tory as “a damned fool on the right side.” On the wrong side, however, there are no splendid fellows. As he says, he “hasn’t patience” with anyone who is either so thick-headed or so unscrupulous as to disagree with him in politics. By way of a hobby he farms 800 acres of land, and he has never had any trouble with his labourers. I will admit that he is generous with a careless, exuberant generosity that does not ask for gratitude. But it is not his generosity that has won for him the devotion of his servants and employees. They bow before his certainty. He is a religion to them, a trustworthy holdfast in this world of unstable things. And I suppose that is also why he is still “my friend.” His conversation is nothing but a string of affirmations with none of which I can agree. He is an intolerable bore, and his voice hurts me. But I regard him with wonder and admiration, and when the terrors and oppressions of the world threaten to break my spirit I go to him for strength.