cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always
aloof. He did not invite discussion. It needed some courage to go to him
with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a
"Yes" or "No." He lacked what Lord Morley attributed to Gladstone, "the
priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock." No one thought
more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would
not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. Men like
being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, I have
reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon
him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from
pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not
going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more
enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one
who liked discussion for discussion's sake.

Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I
cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently
aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his
team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and
a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the
separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He
welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both
as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally
speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented
mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the
new Young Ireland.

But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they
were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party--Redmond's essential
limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities