Dear old Dr. Johnson used to pray to be delivered from “vacillation
and vagrancy of mind, mental vellications and revulsions.” These
are also our most painful infirmity. The conflict of ambitions in
the mind is no easy problem. When one considers the career of a man
like Lord Northcliffe it is fairly evident that he knew more or less
clearly what he wanted, and went after it. He wanted to be a Great
Newspaper Proprietor, and he wanted to be a figure behind the scenes
(but the scenes need not be too opaque) in politics. He succeeded very
powerfully in all this, as competent and dogged men do when they have
a clearly defined objective. And in order to succeed in this manner,
it is fairly plain that he did not mind failure in the other realms of
life. Poetry, peaceful privacy, philosophy, and all the other pensive
pleasures that begin with a p, he was content (we imagine) to ignore.
This business of making up one’s mind among the various ambitions
that an exciting planet offers is highly perplexing. There is one
part of our mind that hankers only for seclusion, rambling by lonely
watersides, and plenty of ink and paper. There is another unregenerate
lobe of our brain that would find a life of important trivial
bustling like Northcliffe’s highly diverting and agreeable. It must
be interesting (we sometimes ponder) to have a steam yacht, play golf
with Premiers, talk choppily and brusquely over the telephone to a
hireling Editor, and persuade oneself that the great laws of life are
coming to heel very nicely. There is no doubt about it, the business of
being a Public Figure probably has in it a great deal of exhilarating
excitement that keeps the mind from brooding and painful activity.
We were interested to read in one of the papers not long ago a piece
about how a conscientious young man of wealth is studying to fit
himself for “public life”--which means, presumably, politics. It would
be profitable to hear a discussion from the local magi as to what
constitutes the best training for a political career. Aristotle made
some comment--didn’t he?--about educating a special class of public
servants--we must look it up in the _Politics_. We cannot rid ourself
of the idea that the most important feature of such a training would
be a considerable period of travel, to instil into the mind of the
intending statesman that no one country has any monopoly of wisdom,
humour, scenery, or good cooking. We have been much struck by the fact
that since the war young graduates of British universities who would
in earlier times have made their Grand Tour on the mainland of Europe
have been trooping hither in astonishing numbers to have a look at the
American scene. It has evidently penetrated the mind of the British
political-minded classes that social phenomena over here are important
and interesting enough to merit observation.
Almost every reasonably high-minded young man has, we suppose, thought
at one time or another about the duty of going into politics--and then,
if he has any tincture of sensitiveness, has sheered off in alarm after
seeing the dreadful antics that the ambitious underling has to perform.
He has seen, perhaps, a current event movie of an Assistant Secretary
of the Navy marching gayly in a parade of The Elks at Atlantic City;
or, driving quietly past a Long Island picnic glade, has noticed a
gathering in motor trucks--Greenpoint Nest No. 653, Fraternal Order
of Owls--being harangued, preliminary to hot dogs and Eskimo Pie, by
a perspiring young man in white flannel trousers who hopes for a job
as Assemblyman. Do not misunderstand us: we are not mocking these
necessary small jobs at the foot of the political ladder. They have to
be done, and it is only right that they should be done by those zealous
fellows who can get some fun out of them. The life of politics, which
we study with increasing amazement, must be an exhausting and exciting
one, very foreign to the placid instincts of the philosophic observer.
The latter, if he is wise, will restrain his impulse to mock, and will
try to preserve that mood of affectionate scrutiny which is the only
permanently valuable attitude towards human affairs. But sometimes he
will think that newspaper men ought to be drafted, by an occasional
compulsory legislation, into Government service. After several years
of unrebuked privilege to snap and snigger at public men the tables
ought to be turned. Some of us who show, in our unmolested kennels,
such sweet untested wisdom, might well be hounded out to take a share
in the difficult, damnable business of making the machinery go. But the
electorate need not be alarmed. There is no real danger. At the first
tread on the stair the editor would be out by the window.
But we were speaking of Lord Northcliffe. We have never made a careful
study of his career, but oddly enough we have always had a sort of
sneaking affection for the man himself while regarding that type of
person in general as extremely mischievous. We do not care at all for
these people who accumulate newspapers much as they would a number of
suits of clothes, and who hire editors to traipse round the world with
them as a kind of subservient mouthpiece. We are being told by all the
papers that Northcliffe “wielded terrific power.” Well, in a way, we
suppose he did; but it was a power that dealt mainly in ephemeral and
unimportant things. Even his greatest triumph, the Premiership of Lloyd
George, he could not permanently control. It was one of the oddities of
coincidence that on the day of Northcliffe’s death a cable dispatch
comes in telling us that four of Mr. George’s goats have won prizes at
a goat show. Mr. George has a goat farm, it appears. If it would not
seem heartless, we should say that Lord Northcliffe died rather than
have to read Mr. Lloyd George’s memoirs. He had a great spirit and a
huge ambition; but we cannot see in his career any evidence that Public
Life and power necessarily develop the finer and more sensitive parts
of man.
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