Higgins quoted Kettle as saying: "This tragedy of Europe may be and must be the prologue to the two reconciliations of which all statesmen have dreamed – the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great Britain".
Cameron will be playing it safe and trying to look like a statesmen in comparison with his opponents.
First, it must move away from the empty and squalid anti-SNP rhetoric of some of its elder statesmen, who now resemble old Japanese soldiers in the thickets of an island in the Pacific fighting a war that was lost a long time ago.
The networks' silver foxes, meanwhile, are elevated to elder statesmen.
Issues such as these sort out the true statesmen from the slippery politicians.
Statesmen and international businessmen are not the only ones who find this isolationist streak maddening.
Will Mr Brown?Of course, leaders of the Lib Dems are different to prime ministers: the public assesses them more as entertainers and less as prospective statesmen.
With all due credit to upstanding statesmen like Mr Kohl and his ilk, fans should greet these barbarians at the gate with flowers, not pitchforks.
With time on his hands, he was able to badger the British and American statesmen of the day with unsolicited advice on everything from a Venezuelan border dispute and the status of the Philippines to the peaceful nature of the German Kaiser and the necessity for international disarmament.
In 1878 Punch published a series of cartoons of the three Britons whom they deemed to be the greatest statesmen of the age Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone and Bright.
Its statesmen generally do set out to make the world a better place.
