Neil James Archibald Primrose, son of Lord Rosebery, son-in-law of the seventeenth Earl of Derby, brother-in-law to the Marquess of Crewe, went to war in 1917. By way of a send-off, Sir Alfred Mond organized a dinner in his honour; and one of those attending was Viscount Sandhurst, who found the occasion ‘interesting’ but evocative of certain sad memories since the house in which the party was held had once belonged to the late Lord Kimberley, with whom he had often dined in happier days. ‘But what a different gathering’, Sandhurst mused in his diary, ‘Gladstone, Granville, Spencers, Kimberleys, Breadalbanes and so on. The old order with a vengeance has given place to the new.’ Strength had been lent to the conviction, perhaps, by Sandhurst's immediate neighbours at the Primrose dinner, Lord Cowdray and Sir Robert Munro. The first was Asquithian and wealthy, a Yorkshire industrialist who wrote blank cheques for Liberal party funds, allowed Asquithian conclaves to meet at his house in Carlton House Terrace, and who was known pre-eminently in Liberal circles in his role as ‘the good angel of the W[estminster] G[azette]’.