GREAT FEATS OF THE OLD

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 69, 18 September 1937, Page 27

GREAT FEATS OF THE OLD

i«e question ,oij[iow,.old or for that matter yqung a,,rnan.or woman must bet to';, accomplish' great-things! is neves-/likely 7 40,, be-, satisfactorily: answered' Csays a writer in the "Daily Express-)..; -■■.■■■■■.'-■"!_■ •■• "■•■ '' • '■'■

Some'men'are'older at sixteen than others are at' sixty. The sexagenarian who wrote that he swims further and faster1 every^ year may be .exceptional, but he-i9-certainly not unique, for there is,- at/least one-octogenarian who keeps him company.': George Bernard Shaw, he is 81, still swims vigorously winter and. summer' every morning.. Incidentally, .-,■■ he wtbte "St. Joan," whicih:many;people' say is his finest work;[at'67.■■"■■■'. '-.-''.' V :. ■

Oh the other hand he was barely heard of before he was 42. The two things may be connected.

Capability as applied to human beings va'Fies .as-Tnuch in time as it does'- in -place,'

Bijt tjie^peopie: who go very far very 'yourig,.bften exhaust themselves before friiaSJe'age. The younger Pitt was Prime.-.^Minister.-.at 24, but he died befork he was-fifty; Mozart, a genius at eight,' never lived to be 35, and the accident which destroyed Shelley when he was 30 may not have anticipated Natufe by more than a few months. \ ■■'■ . '■■ ■ ,

For a man to sustain an active life of great achievement; for fifty years as Gladstone .did,' arid' to drown it as Gladstone crowned it, when he became Prime Minister, for the jEourth time at 84, with' some of. the best work in his ffareer, is very fare indeed.

But there axe ittany men who develop .steadily, eveh; as they age, and at the end of .a long life appear to bs doing1 better than;they did in the course of it, Goethe's literary greatness rose to its climax, with the publication of "Faust" when he was long past 80..' • .Robert- Browning wrote "Asolarido" at the very end of his 3ife at 78, and Michelangelo set the seal;on ,his' work when he'put the aome onVSt. ■Petefrß in: Rome at the age'pi-70; although some people hold that'hiis painting-of the "Last Judgment," completed six years before that, •was,>the>finest' tiling that he ■'..or. any. other man created.

The Great War of 1914 to 1918 was also a great Vindication of old men. Marshal Foch was 66 when he took over the command of the Allied armies. Clemenceau .at 77 imposed his will on the entire Peace Conference. .

At the same time the British people were so far from demanding youth at the helm that they all shouted in 1914 for 64-year-old Lord Kitchener to lead them. ■ ■• *

The fprmer President Masaryk achieved his dream of creating a free Czechoslovakia when he was 67 and governed it till he was past 80 in a manner decidedly more advanced than the far younger rulers of its neighbour States.

Pilsudski was. sixty when he took over the Government of the Poland which he had helped forge in the field for ten years before that. Time, together with experience, often goes on sharpening the intellectual faculties long after the body has begun to wear out.

But aft active mind can also keep the body alive and active as well. The very fact that Lister was 64 when he founded his Institute of Preventive Medicine, thus opening up a new field of activity for.himself at an age when most men consider giving up their active life altogether, gave an impetus and direction to his energies that carried him into his 86th year.

Lord Roberts was active in brain and'body at the end of an eighiy-four-year life which culminated with his victory over the Boers at 68; and when the late Lord Justice Avory died last year, an exact contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Cecil Rhodes, he was at 85 still sitting on the Bench giving sum-mings-up and judgments which will be models of precision, clarity, and discernment for generations of lawyers coming after us.

Sir Christopher Wren, who directed the building of St. Paul's from his own designs when he was sixty and superintended the building of rjateways. and chambers in the Temple ten years after that, lived to be 91.

Sir Oliver Lodge, who at 76 was still tackling wireless and relativity, remains active and inspiring lo this very day. But the man who ages rapidly after retiring in middle life is sadly familiar lo all of us.