Fitness For The Job EFFECTS OF ILLNESS ON WORLD LEADERS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28481, 10 January 1958, Page 10

Fitness For The Job EFFECTS OF ILLNESS ON WORLD LEADERS

(By a tag correspondent of th* "Sydney Morning Iterate.”]

London, January 4.—A man of 00 probably will not get a job aa a nightwatchman if his health is bad. But he may well become a Prime Minister or a President, and control the destinies of millions. ’ ' An article this week in the British medical journal, “The Practitioner,” -spotlighted this problem of the sick statesman. The author is Dr. Hugh L’Etang. an expert in industrial health. At several times of crisis in the last 50 years, he says, the affairs of the world have been in , the hands of men whose Judgment and efficiency "was significantly affected by ill-health. Among those he names are , President Wilson at the Paris , peace conference in 1918, President Roosevelt at the fateful Yalta , meeting, Mr Ernest Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps in the critical days just after the war. and Mr 1 Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Dr L’Etang’* starting point is the ill-health of President Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden. The publicity surrounding the illnesses of these two men, he says, while “condemned by many unthinking people as an unwarranted intrusion into the sickroom and a sign of morbid curiosity, has served to remind the public that while the modern statesman needs a high standard of mental and physical fitness, he is liable to suffer from the same disease I as others in the same age group.” ’ Sick, Rather Than Sinning , He adds: "This lack of publicity in the part has resulted in the < public being unaware that states- i men have continued in office when I seriously incapacitated.” There is good evidence that ' some political leaders of the 1930’5, decried as "guilty men" ' who failed to stop the rise to power of the dictators, were “sick men rather than sinners." President Wilson’s illness in 1918-19 made him show “poor 1 judgment, inflexibility of blind, , and at times a dour obstinacy" , in his dealings with Lloyd j George, Orlando and Clemenceau 2 in Europe, and with the Republi- , can Senators at home. <

After the left-sided hemiplegia which developed in October. 1919. his actions “destroyed any hope of the American Senate ratifying the peace treaty and agreeing to enter the League of Nations; his intellect impaired. Woodrow Wilson struggled on until early in 1921, when Warren Harding succeeded him." Of President Roosevelt, Dr. L’Etang writes: “It has been said that the concessions made to the Russians at Yalta were the mistakes of a dying man. His supporters say he made a supreme effort and was in full command of his faculties. But this is very difficult to believe.” Former Vigour Lost Mr Neville Chamberlain, “who, incidentally, had the family gout,” at first conducted affairs with vigour and confidence. After his resignation in May, 1940, he underwent two operations for an abdominal growth, and he died in November that year. “Is it not possible," asks Dr. L’Etang, "that the effects of the growth were making themselves felt towards the end of 1939? “Should not this fact be considered before cruelly criticising his conduct of affairs during the ‘phoney war?’ ’’ . Sir Stafford Cripps, at the time of his crucial devaluation of the pound sterling in 1949, was seriously ill with the disease that later killed him.

At the same time Mr Ernest Bevin was a sick man at the Foreign Office. He had a heart attack at one international conference, and was so ill at another that he had to be carried into the conference chamber; Ramsay MacDonald in office was a sick man of whom a contemporary said: “His mental powers were in decay,” while Mr Stanley Baldwin, Britain’s Prime Minister during the abdication crisis, had (according to another contemporary) lost his nerve. Every burden was a nightmare to him. In conclusion. Dr. L’Etang writes: “It is tempting to attribute failure of a stateman's policy to his ill-health. “In the statesmen mentioned, it must naturally remain a matter of opinion how much their efficiency was affected by their various disabilities. That it was significantly affected there is no doubt whatever.”

The "Daily Express" now has suggested that no British Cabinet Minister should hold office without a six monthly check by a panel of specialists. But the “Manchester Guardian" says: “Medical examinations clearly would not help. They might even have deprived us of President Roosevelt in his years of greatness." The "Manchester Guardian” says the world is suffering because of the illnesses of President Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden, but it adds: "We have only ourselves to blame if we let ourselves be ruled by sick men." To absolve statesmen from moral blame, does not cancel the harm their policies did; it merely raises the question how sick men as well as sinners can be kept from damaging their countries* interests.