HIE CONDITIONS OF SURVIVAL

Hokitika Guardian, 2 August 1927, Page 3

HIE CONDITIONS OF SURVIVAL

I think there are three tests or qualities for which you can prophesy the survival in the general memory of a politician or statesman seventy or a hundred years after his death. The first is the elusive quality of a great or an inscrutable personality, something different from the ordinary qualities of talent which move upwards on the accepted roads of lame. Ihe second is association with some sensational event either in foreign or home affairs, great constitutional or economic changes, the entrance into an epoch-making war, or the exit from it in victory. The third is the association with great calamity, either in malice, domestic, or foreign levy. Thus Charles I. would never he remembered if lie bad not had his head cut off. Nor would the agreeable, commonplace, good-natured Lord North he known by a single soul if lie were not associated with the war with the American coi’onics and the loss of the first British Empire. The names of all others are mutable.—The Rt. Hon. C. F. G. Mastcnmm in “ The Evening Standard.”