NO PRIMROSE PATH

Evening Star, Issue 19789, 13 February 1928, Page 11

NO PRIMROSE PATH

THE ROAD TO GREATNESS It used to he the custom to ask men who had made their own way to “say something ” to hoys just starting in that endeavor (writes Mr Hamilton Fyfe in the ‘Daily Chronicle’), something which would be useful to them, some piece of advise they would he likely to remember and use profitably all their lives. The advice which, it seems to me, is most urgently needed and least often supplied to aspiring young men and women is the warning that they must be prepared to find every kind of obstacle thrown in their way. , . This is where the new mode of biography comes in useful. It tells us lar more than we used to be told about the periods of struggle. It shows us how great reputations were .built up, how weary the builders ot them often grew of their task, how little sometimes they valued the eventual results. , Until I read Herr Emil Ludwigs • Bismarck ’ upon its recent appearance "I had always supposed that the Prussian statesman who dominated the imagination of Europe and was credited with “creating the. German Empire” had been recognised from his youth up as a Man of Destiny " Now that they have learned how long it took him to induce people to regard him seriously, to consider him fit for important offices, to admit that ho had any sort of talent, 1 see that lie was no exception to the rule. mien he and Disraeli mot, as old men, they could have exchanged almost identical recollections—recollections of being up against the world, receiving no help from anybody, having to set then teeth and push through by thcr own strength alone “ Every step of his way Dizzy had to ftrrht—alone, until he married; even then alone in the political field. The idea which many cherish that as soon as a 1 voting man shows promise there are plenty of hands stretched nut to help him is a dangerous delusion. Hands are stretched out. it is true, but their purpose is mostly not to help him up; it is to keep him down. By all means spur on the young to high endeavor by showing thoni what famous men and women have achieved. But let ns tell them also what an arduous achievement it was.