The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31. "WRECKS THAT STREW THE EMPIRE."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 121, 31 August 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31. "WRECKS THAT STREW THE EMPIRE."

Lord Selborne lately made some remarks at Winchester College, and as they are as appropriate to New Zealand as to England, they are worth discussion. He mentioned that ibetween the idle rich and the loafing poor there was no essential difference in point of utility. The visible [difference was merely one of physical dirtiness as against physical cleanliness. The point of view this industrious 1 statesman took is that no living human being is to be admired for what lie lias, so much I as for. the things he does, and, in passing, he mentioned that when he employed a ' man he did not ask. himself whether he had played in such and such a representative cricket team o.r whether he was a 1 University man, but "Can I trust him V' Here is a fine phrase that ia very true: | "The Empire is strewn with the wrecks of scholars and athletes', who lack some-

tiling more important than Greek iambics and. cricket." New Zealand has a great scorn of the "down at heels" imported University man who has never been taught anything useful, but ifc is a stickler for giving everybody the same sort oi chance that the "down at heels" man has had. There are wandering M.A.'s who would have made very good carpenters if they had been taught how, and there ' are carpenters who are not worth their places at the bench but who would make excellent schoolmasters. Lord Selborne | said in the course of liis address that the ' man who would not Obey orders was a 1 . nuisance who should be eliminated as a I /worker. Every country has its proportion ' | of "masterless men," and in this country, < jas in all others, they are the greatest ' menace to national progress. It is at j present impassible to have a national | discipline so severe that every man: is called upon to do his share of ! work, and even if it were possible to ! coerce the pauper loafer into doing his share of the world's work it would be hopeless to persuade the idle rich that

there was anything more worthy than pleasure. But the true characteristics of individuals' do not greatly change with their surroundings. It is possible to , liave a millionaire who works "like a I tiger" and to ihave wealthy men who could ibe trusted implicitly to obey orders. But to come down to the point of these remarks. No matter what opportunity is given to the individual no man can make him either a success or a failure. Whether the loafer is rich or poor, he will remain a loafer. It is beyond the power of any man to take off-hand a j. crowd of human ibeings and by any sys- | tem to make every individual hard-work-ing, trustworthy and of use nationally. 1 How ever we may rave about equality of opportunity and "a fa% day's pay for a fair day's work," the individual's ability to succeed or to be a decent citizen or to become eminent is as much a part of himself as hie hands or his feet. The average gardener is not fool enough to wilfully prevent a plant from taking its natural bent, but in his dealings with the human animal man seems to believe that various classes of them shall be carefully coerced into the same groove. This gives us the university graduates who are perfectly familiar with Caesax but who are quite unable .to achieve any useful ofoject, and' people of socialistic tendencies are quite convinced that everybody should have a chance to know as much as "the wrecks who strew the Empire." The Empire is being increasingly strewn with the "superior person," and i it is beeamse of the superiority of the person that the ordinary "coat-off" jobs ' are unpopular. The fact is that, with | all our progress and education, the world ; still goes on producing men who ought to Ibe "hewers of wood and drawers of | water" and men who should control the hewers. The modern tendency of the emancipated hewer is to drive the controller, and this is all very well where he has the natural and God-given power to do so. No person of ordinary intelligence Ibelieves that "a cobbler should stick to his last" if he is cut out to be" a Prime

Minister, but everyone- understands that the born cobbler who leaves his last with the futile belief that he is a born Prime Minister is quite as much a nuisance as the class Lord Selborne mentioned. Training and advantages never yet created ability, although they may have fostered it. Advantages given to unworthy subjects are frequently a handicap to them. . The world is made unhappy by misfits, by clerks who ought to be farmer®, peers who should be potato-diggers, socialists who are cut out to be emperors, and: kings who should be mental hospital patients. And, eminent as he is, no suggestion of Lord Selborne's can alter the fact that men we can trust were iborn bo and that the men we can't trust can't help it. There are thousands of people in the world who are not apparent failures 1 because they had no trust in their individual ability. The only test of a man's ability is to take I away all his support and set him going /'on his own." If he fail, he was a failure before; if he succeed, he can't help it—ihe's born that way. The failures of the world—tile "wrecks that strew the Empire" should not fie food for pcorn, but objects of pity. The educated roan who is a helpless wrcclc is the sort of person who should not be al-

low to "go alone," and the pauper failure is not allowed to go alone. Thousands of fat sinecurists robbed of their support might become loafers, and any loafer could become a sinecurist, but no system ever devised can change the inward individualism or moral libre of a man. In the year 3010 there will still be "wrecks strewing the Empire," and statesmen will still wonder why everybody cannot be as industrious and moral and law-abiding as themselves. And the truth will be the same then as now —that, however you may use what Nature pro- | vides, you cannot alter her invariable law I of variety. .