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.
