AGE’S PART IN POLITICS

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 19

AGE’S PART IN POLITICS

DISRAELI'S CRY WHEN MINISTER A few considerations on age.in politics may be offered by way of pendant to some recent observations on youth in the same sphere (writes J. B. Firth, in the London ‘ Daily Telegraph ’). _ There will be found the. same difficulty about laying down hard and fast rules. Exceptions are so numerous and often so striking that they spoil the symmetry of the rule. Wo have just seen an elder statesman who should have learnt caution with the years, plunge into an ill-prepared revolution with all the reckless impetuosity of a boy.. The complaint is that there are' too many “ old men ” in politics, that they paralyse enterprise and hold on too long. Aristotle—if it is permitted to qupte him as an authority in these days—considered that a man reached the prime of his intelligence at about 50. By then he has acquired whatever stock of “ phronesis ” i.e., the_ quality which enables him to form right and just judgments—he is likely to attain. If a man is at his prime at 50 he should still at 60 be fit for office and the conduct of public affairs, and the generally accepted idea of antiquity was that age—end even old age—was no disqualification for office unless, of course, accompanied by marked physical deterioration.

. The age limits of the ancient world operated in a different way from ours. They ' prescribed that specific offices should not be held in the attainment of a certain age. Our age limits, on the .contrary, are mostly compulsory retiring limits. Under the Roman Empire there seems to have been a law requiring the retirement of. senators at 60, but apparently it was not in operation long. If elder statesmen are not to sit in Senates, where are they to sit? The prevailing doctrine .was , that youth is reckless and ill-balanced, that middle-age is meant for action, and that political wisdom increases with experience and age ; . - ■ • Cicero speaks of the “ ferocitas ” of youth, the “ gravitas ” of the _ long middle period, and the “ maturitas ” of age. He would have agreed with Lear—ripeness is all. The crown of age was expressed in one word—“ auctorites,” That view has sensibly weakened in modern times. The Nestorian tradition has everywhere'lost ground. The alderman who has “ passed the chair ” is regarded as “a back number ” to be written, off. He "has presided for his full year at the feast, and should he ready—con viva .satuf—to, give way to another.

The high average—as it is described —of the age of post-war Cabinets is often -the subject of contemptuous remark as though it inflicted an injustice on younger men in their fifties and prevented post-war ideas from having a fair chance to shape or even; to influence Cabinet policy. Professor-J, B. Haldane, urged some .time ago that at least a third of the Cabinet should be under 40 years of agej instead of the average being 57 as it then was. “You cannot _ expect old men/ 3 he said, “ to deal with the present world situation. 33 As a biologist he naturally put his case on biological' grounds. Curiously enough, Alcibiades—who almost certainly knew nothing of biology—put forward a very similar plea that young men and old should share together the task of directing public affairs. His own career ? however, was but a poor Recommendation of his argument. Yet no one seriously contests the desirability of having a youngish element in the Cabinet, if only because before men are good in Cabinet they require to serve their apprenticeship. As a matter of fact, the average age of the post-war Cabinets has certainly been no higher than that of pre-war Cabinets. If the 1906 Cabinet contained a larger proportion of young men than most, it was because the Liberal party had been out of office so long that “ the old gang 33 had largely disappeared or had become Old Parrs., “ PAM 33 AT EIGHTY.n Except a man has definitely poor health' he fis just as likely to, be capax imperii in his sixties as in his fifties. He may even run on well into the seventies without his natural. force being abated. The danger then is lest he fall a belated victim to the ferocitas of youth and become “ an old man in a hurry, 33 like Mr Gladstone. The roll of British statesinen shows many remarkable septuagenarians. Palmerston retained Ins vigour, audacity, and popularity to the day of his death, which found him, still Prime Minister, at 80. ’ Yet more than 10 years before' Dis- ' raeli had written of him: “ He is really an imposter, utterly exhausted, and at the best only ginger beer and not champagne, and now an old painted pantaloon, very deaf, very blind. 33 Was ever the splenetic judgment of an adversary more decisively belied PIf Disraeli himself had enjoyed either Palmerston 3 s or robust: constitution, or if he had climbed a bit earlier to the top of his “ greasy pole,” there would _ have been more solid achievement in his record. “ Power has come to me too late/ 3 he groaned in 1878.' “There were days when I felt on waking that I could move dynasties and governments, but that has passed away. 33 He lived to be more of the “ old painted pantaloon 33 even than “Pam, 33 but no one called him “ ginger beer. 33 Nothing is more pathetic than the story of reluctant retirement at 85. He posed to himself even in his private diary as one longing to shake off the toils of public care and be free. ' ■ t “ My age did something 1 ,■ but not enough. The deterioration of my hearing helped, but insufficiently. It is the state of my sight which has supplied me with effectual aid in exchanging my imperative public obligations for what seems to be a free place on ‘ the breezy common of humanity. 3 31 Yet when, a little later, a friend alluded sympathetically to his retirement, he turned to him swiftly and said, “Not retirement; I have been put out. 33 So stubbornly did the old man stand on the order of his going. No one is so old, says Cicero, that he does not think he can live another year.. Few men in high office are so old as to doubt their ability to carry on another twelve-month., Earl Rus- : sell was an exception when, in 1867 7 he publicly declared that he had “ decided never to take office again on a deliberate view of my past labours, my present age, and the future anxieties of the State. 33 His is the example to be commended. Russell quitted the banquet before his friends wished him gone. So, did Lord Salisbury, to the great misfortune, as it proved, of the Conservative Party, for he was an incomparably better leader than his successor. But he yielded to age and the philosophers desire for a time of quiet self-collection before the close. Lord Ripon/on the. other hand, took it very badly when he was dropped in 1906, though he had held office in every

Liberal Government since 1859. Earl Granville was wounded to' the quick when his devoted friend and chief gave the Foreign Office—where he had been a notorious failure —to Lord Rosebery in 1886, and de-graded him to •'the Colonial Office. There is no denying it, unfortunately. If impetuosity; is the vice of youth, limpetuosity—if I may coin a word—is the sin of age. Yet it stirs the blood to read of some of the “grand old men” of historv. What a scene in the Athenian Assembly when Phocion, in a last effort to stop a foolish war, proposed that every man up to the age of 60 should provide, himself with five days’ provisions and follow him into the field! When , the elder citizens murmured he said: “There is no hardship, for I, who am to lead you, am over 80!” AGED STATESMEN. In the fierce fight over the Parliament Bill the chief honours—such as they were in that disastrous controversy—fell to Lord Halsbury, then not merely old but ancient. If it be objected that his ■ was the last desperate . splutter of a beaten faction, that cannot be said of other grahd old men still more recent celebrity. President Masaryk, the founder of modern Czechoslovakia, has just celebrated his 85th birthday. President Hindenburg, who died last year, entered. upon the second phase of the career which was to make him for 20 years, in victory and defeat, the idol of the German people, when he was already on the retired list, I will cite only one name more—that of Georges Glemenceau. When the groundings scoff at palsied age fumbling at the controls during times of stress aind crisis, the old “Tiger” is the best retort, “ Pere Victoirel ” What a nickname! A scrap of dialogue -may be quoted fronr one of the late Lord Riddell’s “ Diaries it relates to Clemenceau’s stubborn attitude at the Peace Conference at Versailles! . Lloyd George: “He is'a hard old dog. As Brand said, ho was born with one day’s good nature inside him, and he used it up pretty,quickly.” Riddell: “ But- at times he rose to great heights.” L.G.: “Yes,-he is a great patriot. France is everything to him. He thinks of France and her dangers and her greatness and it rouses in him wonderful emotions.” ■“ Emotions ” issuing’ in are worth having. If Georges ‘ Clemenceau had lived 2,000 years ' ago he would have had an honoured place in the entertaining essay which • Plutarch wrote on this very question. “ Whether Old Men Should Take Part in Public Life.” The historian of Chaeronea—writing, when the Roman )vorld seemed happily sunk in firmly established Eeace —would have matched him with is favourite heroes and hot found him wanting. Age limits are set by practical expediency, not imposed by inexorable natural.law. The fire of genius, when it burns in Age, burns with a steady anjl constant flame. The association of Age with wisdom-is hot ; a fiction, but the wisdom must be demonstrated. not assumed, and the reasonable claims of the next contingent must, not be! denied their just satisfaction too long.