TRIALS OF GREAT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 80, 16 January 1936, Page 10

TRIALS OF GREAT

HOW THEY WON THROUGH. OBSTACLES A CHALLENGE. The feature which has served to endear the legend of Dick Whittington to the hearts of millions'of children is not the remarkable achievements of his fabulous cat, but the account of his unexpected reversal of fortune. This is an aspect of life which appeals to all people in all ages, says an English paper. There is nobody on whom fortune smiles all the time. Not even the great ones of the earth are immune from misfortunes; indeed, their setbacks seem all the greater by reason of the contrast. What is more, the obstacles they have to surmount are such as would.deter lesser men. That they do surmount them may be a matter of luck, but tho real explanation is usually to be found in the indomitable persistence which has made thorn great men. Then, too } they possess a daring which prompts them to take risks from which ordinary folks would turn. One of the greatest world figures living today has known all the vicissitudes of being "up against it." Yet he need never have undergone any of them. As a young man, ho qualified, for a scholastic, career, and had he chosen to follow it, doubtless he would have remained unknown and of mediocre prosperity until the ■ present day. If he had, world history would have been different. Rise of Mussolini. Instead, this young man with the fiery eyes chose to get mixed up in politics, and, of a consequence, was "sacked." So he left his home country, worked as a labourer, actually begged on one occasion and ultimately became famous. A few years ago, at an international conference in Geneva, Signer Mussolini took the late Aristide Briand by the arm and led him to the window. Pointing to a seat in the park, the Duce said simply, "That's where I used to sleep!" It Avas not only when he forsook scholarship for politics that Mussolini had hard problems to face. Perhaps the most uphill of all his fights was when he left the Socialist Party and founded what has now become a national journal, "II Popolo d'ltalia." That paper started with no capita! beyond a loan on the security of an advertising contract. Where lesser men would have failed, the future dictator stuck to his guns, with the result that victory ultimately crowned his efforts. Napoleon was another man who would take risks and gamble with fate. Unlike Mussolini, he had no very clear religious convictions but he had a profound belief in what he called "his star," though he eventually overtaxed the patience of the angels. In his early youth, when the French Revolution was in progress, he took a bold plunge by overstaying his leave from the army in order to canvass for electi6n to the command of the Corsican Legion. Even in those days of turmoil, some sort of discipline' was maintained, so Napoleon, tho greatest soldier of the age, was "Stellenbosched." Many Schemes. When young, Napoleon was fruitful of wild schemes; he had talked about running away to join the service of the East India Company, and later was plunged into plans for speculative building with Fauvelet de Bourrienne, who afterwards became his secretary. The late Dr. Dollfuss, Chancellor of . the Austrian Republic, had to < face knotty problems in his day, but they were not all big public ones. He was not born great, but in the beginning at all events, greatness was thrust upon him and he attained heights which he could scarcely have sealed under the old regime. His military career was the beginning of his rise, for he was awarded a commission for gallantry, but the elements of greatness were in him. Thousands of men on both sides doubtless received such a distinction, but relatively few used it as the foun-dation-stone of their fortunes and none achieved so much in the .short time as Dollfuss did.

In its early days the profession of journalism possessed all the picturesque Bohemianism that has now, to a large extent, become the perquisite of unsuccessful artisfs, and at one memorable dinner the publisher, Edward Cave, sent a plate to a gentleman who insisted on sitting behind a screen. This was no less than the great Samuel Johnson, who felt that his garments were too shabby to exhibit. When David Garrick, perhaps the greatest of all actors, travelled to London to try his fortune on the metropolitan stage, the sum total of his resourpes consisted of three halfpence. Tn later years he did not take it kindly when he was reminded of this circumstance. Another romantic figure of those days was Savage, the poet. He and his biographer, D'i" Johnson, once spent the night walking round St. James's Palace, because they had not the price of a bed between them. Savage subsequently died in a debtor's prison, tho gaoler paying for the funeral. This unfortunate author was but one of many who were unable to stay the pace, and starved on fame before Johnson made journalism a learned profession. Hindenburg's Story. The recent death of Paul von Hindenbuig, Field-Marshal under the old Empire, and then President of the German Republic, has served' to recall tho fact that he nearly missed his place in history altogether. Even before the war broke out, he was on the retired list, and there is still in existence a pathetic letter from him to a friend in the German War Office asking for a command and saying how very much "out of it" he felt, with eevrybody else joining the colours while he remained at home, so that he felt mi-

willing to show himself in public. The Russian invasion of Eastern Germany caused people to look round for somebody to save the situation. Owing to Hindenburg's preoccupations with the Masurian Lakes, he was regarded as something, of a crank in military circles and they nicknamed him Mud," somewhat in the sense in which English people speak of an old-fashioned individual as "old-stick-in-the-mud." In 1914, Germany turned to her "stick-in-the-mud" and the result was the Battle of Tannenberg.