AFTER FORTY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 31 March 1928, Page 11

AFTER FORTY

COME time ago an eminent physician staggered humanity (by declaring that every man had exhausted himself at 40. iSir William Beveridge lias not quite such a low opinion of his fellowcreatures, hut he felt it his duty to tell ari audience of schoolboys that the olden one gets the harder it is to learn; and his illustration was that a man could never learn to play chess well “once ho had come to forty year.” It was not kindly done (says the London j “Daily Telegraph”). Those boys will now survey their parents, their pastors, and masters, with a more supercilious brow as creatures publicly acknowledged and officially cerrificd incapable of learning anything. If (Sir William has formed the opinion that boys need this sort 'of stimulus, his experience of them must be less extensive than peculiar. He might plead the authority of the ancients, whoso wisdom has declared to us that “you can't teach an old dog new tricks. ” But the point in dispute is whether a man of 40 is an old dog. We prefer not to a,dmit chess as a test, for in that field, as in music, it seems that all the great masters are precocious.

LEARNING A NEW JOB

Fow politicians attain a position in which they can learn the business of administration until after 40.

Sir William Beveridge will not be cynical enough to retort that- the consequences prove his ease. What is the explanation of Chatham, who, having held no important office before, was made 'Secretary of State, at 48, and instantly became as great a War Minister as the world lias ever seen? When Marlborough was 40 William 111. said there was “no man so fit to be a general who had seen so few campaigns”; when, at 52, he was at last given an independent comm and, a life spent in Court intrigues had left him with,, everything which practice and experience can teaeh of war still to learn. There are no rules which apply to the capacity of genius. But all around us we see’ men not to be suspected of gemius who have moved in middle life from one kind of work to another, yet show sufficient- competence in learning their new jobs, and perform the unfamiliar functions tolerably well. We can. not approve of Sir William Beveridge’s dictum that the older one gets the harder it is to learn. Many young men in every profession could tell him that they have found a trained, experienced, elderly intellect most inconveniently quick in picking up something new. » ‘