For one reason, if not for more, a Liberal Government is popular with golfers of true feeling--because it gives Mr. Arthur Balfour, the ex-Prime Minister, more to the links than when he is burdened with the care of Ministerial office. In the days of the sweet idleness of Opposition we find him at play on a golf links here and on another one there; now opening a new course and delighting the assembled players with a little speech, which is rich in the spirit of the game; and at some other time enjoying a foursome with some old political friend, or with J. H. Taylor or James Braid as his partner. As Mr. Balfour is the better, as he will tell you, for being a golfer, so is golf the happier for his intimate association with it; and some people who do not know and cannot understand, not being of golf, think we make over-much of a statesman’s interest in our pastime, as if the great of the land were not bound closely up with other sports. Good and earnest-minded golfers feel that they are kin to this player, because he is himself a pattern of the man imbued with the best sense of the honour and glory of the game. He is loyal to it, he has the sentiment of it, and he has seen through to the inner recesses of its charm. Thus he is not ashamed, as no good golfer ever is, of abandoning himself entirely to its delights, of setting all his emotions and his thoughts free to race and frolic in the joy of the links, and of allowing the high dignity of the great statesman to sink away into the simple naturalness of the earnest golfer. So we like this late Prime Minister not because of his political rank, but because he loves his game and does his best by it, and is at all times an example to the acolytes who come forward in nervous ignorance of the great meaning of golf.