That the new Prime Minister is a man of remarkable originality and force of character, richly endowed with many of the higher qualities which make a great soldier, we learnt to our cost during the war. But until now we have not known that he also has some, at least, of the gifts of a statesman. He may fail, as others with those rare gifts have failed, for want of the much more commonplace but indispensable abilities which are needed for the daily routine of office; but he has proved that he has the largeness of mind which, rising above the trivialities of the day, can discern and grasp the vital factors of the future. No smaller man would have spoken with the daring candour that marks his speech. ... He spoke as the representative of the great united nation. That is the ideal of a statesman – an ideal which throughout the long struggle with General Botha and his gallant countrymen was held up to us constantly as the true goal of our efforts and our sacrifices by the men who were most resolutely bent on overthrowing the old Boer oligarchy as an insuperable barrier to its accomplishment.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "That the new Prime Minister is a man of remarkable originality and force of character, richly endowed with many of the higher qualities which make a great soldier, we learnt to our cost during the war. But until now we have not known that he also has some, at least, of the gifts of a statesman. He may fail, as others with those rare gifts have failed, for want of the much more commonplace but indispensable abilities which are needed for the daily routine of office; but he has proved that he has the largeness of mind which, rising above the trivialities of the day, can discern and grasp the vital factors of the future. No smaller man would have spoken with the daring candour that marks his speech. ... He spoke as the representative of the great united nation. That is the ideal of a statesman – an ideal which throughout the long struggle with General Botha and his gallant countrymen was held up to us constantly as the true goal of our efforts and our sacrifices by the men who were most resolutely bent on overthrowing the old Boer oligarchy as an insuperable barrier to its accomplishment." in the context of "Quoted from General Botha and some members of the Transvaal Parliament, opened yesterday at Pretoria: The Premier, The Times (15 March 1907), reprinted in The Sphere, p. 250 (23 March 1907)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.