Age And All That

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 174, 23 October 1942, Page 3

Age And All That

T is a good thing for Father William when the young man reminds him that he is old. If it does nothing else it may check the old man’s inclination to do things that in age are hardly right. But it is not good for the young man to be sure that wisdom lies infallibly below black hair. Father William had at least discovered that standing on his head was not dangerous. It was when he was the young man that he was afraid of injuring his brain. So when the Manchester Guardian a few weeks ago, and the member for Tauranga a few days ago, used the age argument against the British and New Zealand Labour Parties, the members of those Parties no doubt decided to "do it again and again". It may be true that here, as in Britain, the youngest party is the oldest. But the oldest members may still be the youngest. The oldest Prime Minister England ever had was William Pitt, who entered Parliament at 22, became Leader at 24, and died at 47 leaving the nation to liquidate abc it forty thousand pounds owing to creditors. He did of course leave something else-a brilliant record as a leader, a reputation for courage and skill that no one in Parliament has ever surpassed,

grateful country, respectful enemies, and a few other things; but we are talking about age, and he was old before he was twenty, since he never went to school, entered Cambridge at fourteen, and when he should have been bleeding noses and kicking or hitting a ball, was sitting in a library reading Latin and Greek. Similarly the oldest members of Parliament New Zealand has yet seen were the three New Liberals who about forty years ago opened fire on Mr. Seddon and the world and disappeared a year or two later in a blaze of solemn farce. Birthdays are just about as foolish a test of political capacity as University degrees, monocles, or whiskers. It is doubtful if they are even a safe test of military capacity, though that is partly at least a physical matter, since the only resounding British success to date was won by a general who is now in his sixtieth year, since every successful German general with one exception has been over sixty, and since Russia has recently called on a man of sixty-two to direct the biggest and most critical battle in modern history. We hear of no young Japanese generals and admirals, and the most astute politician in the whole world to-day had his .seventy-third birthday this month.