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No one knows this arrangement better than the two bodies concerned, and the great statesmen always seem to have kept their place and their dignity, as good servants should. In fact the greater the statesman the deeper and closer is the understanding and co-operation between him and the countryman. Theirs is a man-and-master relationship which is packed with sentiment on both sides but which contains not one grain of sentimentality or false kindness. The master knows his very life depends on the job being done well, and the statesman knows that any mistake he makes may be forgiven but for dear safety's sake will never be forgotten, neither in his own lifetime nor in his son's.

I can only explain this collaboration by saying that it is a sort of horse-and-rider arrangement, but seen from the point of view of the horse.

In Auburn we feel we are very reasonable (as no doubt others do elsewhere) about these riders of ours. We realise that to help us to negotiate different obstacles we need the ingenuities of different men. Earl Baldwin, who made some of us eye him very anxiously when we saw him over in Ipswich carrying a pipe so large that it must have been a sample or a theatrical prop, certainly underestimated Hitler (as well as us on that occasion), and that mistake might well have sent us hurtling over the precipice with our hooves flying. This vital lapse of his has destroyed our faith in his reliability as a Prime Minister, but on the other hand our long memory--which is like an animal's memory, without fancy intellectual thoughts to mutilate it--does not let us belittle his behaviour when he handled a very private and intimate disaster of ours with complete understanding, and did not let us put a foot wrong at a time when every step was an agony to us.