Two Men Who Thought in Millions

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 282, 18 February 1928, Page 24

Two Men Who Thought in Millions

aETWEEN those masterful magnates, Lord Northcliffe and Lord Leverhulme. and the millions that they amassed, we may discern an economic association (writes P. W. Wilson in an American newspaper). Each was a man of the people who had won a peerage by serving the public through the Press. Lord Northcliffe organised newspapers: Lord Leverhulme advertised in them; and in both cases the result was a fortune.

These Biographies may be read, therefore, in parallel. On Lord Northcliffe. Mr. Macnair Wilson pronounces n intimate panegyric which, as we shall see, is all the more instructive because of its limitations. To his father the second Lord Leverhulme devotes an interesting review of commercial and domestic activity which is the more valuable because interpretation thereof is left to the reader. Let

us endeavour, then, to see these books in their perspective. According to Mr. Macnair Wilson—and we agree with him—the Britain of the nineties had arrived for the first time in her history at democracy. Northcliffe, says he, tersely, “believed in Man as opposed to classes of men; in red blood as opposed to blue blood; inequality as opposed to the political liberty of the Whigs." It was the French Revolution that had

at last crossed the Channel. Both to Harmsworth and Lever, therefore, it was the Many who alone mattered. Harmsworth held that the Many should read. Lever added that the Many should wash. Both were right. To both the public responded. Lever's soaps and Harmsworth’s newspapers were equally a success. In both cases the success was thoroughly deserved. Lord Leverhulme was a man of immense ability and public spirit. Not only did he employ his workers, but he housed them, and under conditions fairly to be described a* ideal, in reorganising the Congo, >t was to Lord Leverhulme that King

Albert of Belgium turned for co-opera-tion.

Perhaps the .most charming anecdote in these books shows Leverhulme as the guest of the Rockefellers: The meal was of the simplest. The house was very beautiful, with a great deal of Oriental porcelain of great rarity which is exactly as it should be, because his friends will get a great deal of pleasure out of these works of art. When I arrived there the son introduced me by saying that he thought his father and I had very much in common, to which I replied, “Except one thing, and that was that the father had been able to make money in business, and I never could. The old gentleman at once replied, as quick as a flash, that he was sorry to hear that, as he was on the point of asking me if I could lend him some.

The idea behind the “Daily Mail” was as sound as the Idea behind the use of soap. The only question is whether the idea was fully carried out. According to Mr. Macnair Wilson, the new journalism “brought the empire, the world to the cottage door.” Northcliffe—

gave to the humblest the raw material of opinion. Re made it possible for the agricultural labourer and the dweller in mean streets to argue from actual facts and with knowledge. His news was honest; it was full: it embraced the whole earth. Moreover, the cleverest descriptive writers in the country made it easy to read and easy to understand, I

I- and the cleverest page-makers and typesetters in the country caused it to “leap to the eye.” On the other hand, as we are also reminded, the “Daily Mail” of those days was described as having been “written by office boys for office boys” —a judgment which, as Mr. Macnair Wilson is doubtless aware, was attributed to the late Lord Salisbury. In the case of both our peers, therefore, an interesting question arises. The voice of the people, says the proverb, is the voice of God. But is the proverb to be trusted? Is it the best that makes the strongest appeal to the most? Is it possible for the few to be more discerning than the many? Lord Leverhulme had the imagination to realise that utility in life is not enough. There should also be the beautiful. Hence, he was an enthus-

iastic patron of the arts. His houses were full of pictures, statues, tapestries, furniture and objects of interest to the connoisseur, and it was in such a gallery of masterpieces that, when he died, he lay in state. Y'et the very art which yielded to his purse was a kingdom that he failed to

explore. In the territory that he con quered he lost his way and, as a com pass, his taste was uncertain. Of his lapses, we may mention the piquant experience of Agustus John To be frank, no one, not even Lloyd George, expects to be painted by Augustus John, except at a persona] risk. He is an impressionist to whom a canvas is a battlefield of .colour and when Leverhulme received his face back again he was not at all pleased with what Augustus John had done to it.

One fine day, therefore, the astonished genius was greeted by a familiar package. Opening it he found his picture, with the face cut out —this and not a syllable of explanation. The artistic temperament, solicitous over its i"fstovT.;--'-- was not unruffled, and the p ” 1 ’’s much interested. (Continued on Page 25.)