Tweedsmuir writes at the outset of Pilgrim's Way that the reader in search of gossip on contemporaries needs look elsewhere for he will write only of the dead and that not too ill and frequently leavened with humor. Lost, therefore, are why he and Churchill did not like each other and I, at least, have never been able to learn the reasons, and it tickles me a great deal that they did not.
Buchan/Tweedsmuir was the most generous-spirited public man I have ever read. He knew and worked with everybody: some, Haig, Rhodes, I had formed some opinions about; others, Gladstone, I had no opinions of; a third group, Raymond Asquith, Richard Haldane, I had never heard of. He was generous towards all, even in his criticism.

There is a pattern to Tweedsmuir's writing on others: first, his subjects' virtues and then, only then, any small criticism that he may have. He spends nearly two full pages on Haldane's plusses:

"a benevolent sphinx"
"an oracle"
"a learned lawyer"
"he had in a full degree...the gift of persuasion...presenting his argument as an inevitable deduction from any sane conception of the universe." 

That last was intended by Tweedsmuir as subtle, humorous lead-in to his criticism which begins in the very next paragraph:

"It made him a most formidable advocate...but now and then it led to disaster.  The Scottish Church case was an example...Haldane led for that Church, and his argument fell into two parts--one historical and the other philosophical. [Philosophical? Before a court? Uh-oh.] To the [historical] argument I believe there was no answer, and had it been really pressed, the court could not have resisted it. But [the ominous "But."] Haldane was not an historian, and he concentrated on the philosophical argument based on the familiar Hegelian formulas--that identity exists through change and difference, that a thing is itself only because it is also in some sense its opposite, [What?! lol] and so forth. ["and so forth:" you can sense Tweedsmuir's horror.] It was a remarkable piece of dialectic, but it was an impossible argument to present to a court of justice, and it had the most disastrous effect upon various members of the House of Lords. One, I remember, became fatally confused between the philosophic term 'antinomy' and the metal 'antimony.'"

Lolol. Omg, Haldane.

"There were moments when his impressive words seemed to mean nothing in particular. I once accompanied him through his constituency of East Lothian when he was defending Milner's policy, including Chinese labour, on the Rand. I came out of the hall with two old farmers. 'Was he for it or against it?' one asked. Said the other, 'I'm damned if I ken.'"

I had not remembered any of this from prior readings. Tweedsmuir's humorous use of the common man's opinion is one of his tropes. He used it in the the most memorable description of any of his figures, Prime Minister William Gladstone. It was aid to my full appreciation of the anecdote to have before me an image of Gladstone as I read.

"Mr. Gladstone once paid a visit to a Tweedside country, and in the afternoon went out for a walk and came to a gate which gave upon the glen. It was late in November, a snowstorm was threatening, and the sheep, as is their custom, were drawing out from the burnside to the barer hill where drifts could not lie. An old shepherd was leaning on the gate, and to him Mr. Gladstone spoke in his high manner. 'Are not sheep the most foolish of all animals? Here is a storm pending, and instead of remaining in shelter they are courting the fury of the blast. If I were a sheep I should remain in the hollows.' To which the shepherd replied, 'Sir, if ye were a sheep ye'd have mair sense.'"