NOT TOO OLD AT EIGHTY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1784, 24 June 1913, Page 6

NOT TOO OLD AT EIGHTY.

THE DAT OF THE OLD MAN. Sir George Birdwood, who will be eighty-one this year, discussed recently the saying of Lord Alverstoiw thai our Judges are at their best.from sixty-five to eighty. • , | "I cannot understand why people imagine that this' is the day of tho young man," he said. "Now, moro than ever, it is tho day of the old man with vitality. Of course, Lord Alverstone is perfectly Tight when he says that a, Judge is at his best from the ago of eixty-hvo to eighty. Tho idea of forcing any able man doing great service to. tlio State to retire before he is proved absolutely unfit for liis work is to mo monstrous. An able man's brain goes on developing right lip to ninety and over —only his body <leC!, "The older a man is, so long as he is quite' fit, the better ho is intellectuallytho broader his vision, the saner and wiser his outlook, and tho moro mature his opinions. . "How deeply I appreciate Lord Alverstone's sane remarks, and also Mr. Justico Phillimoro's pregnant saying that the work bo does now is so hard that it he was a younger man ho could not do it. Of course, ho couldn't. No young man could do his work, for his old ago gives hiin the power h© needs. Though lam weak in tho body, my brain- is as clear as over it was, and on certain things 1 can concentrate and think better to-day when I am eiglity-ono than I could when I was thirty, surrounded by distractions to intellectual development. "I stand by tho old men as tho best for all the great and responsible posts—the best to keep in those positions as long as it is possible. The old man of vitality is the youngest man in the world, for ho ha?done with the illusions of youth, but be has not done with life, and to the end it remains full of savour.