" SUCCESS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18019, 18 February 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

" SUCCESS."

ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.

BT LORD BEAVERBROOK.

"I address myself,to the young men of the new age. Those who have youth also possess opportunity. There is in the British Empire to-day no bar to success which resolution cannot break." So says Lord Bea.verhrook in the preface to "Success," a book of fourteen essays in which this great Canadian discusses what goes to tho making of success, particularly in tho business world. It is a practical guide for practical men, discarding entirely all natural advantages except health and brains. " Like all human affairs," he says, " success is partly a matter of prodestination .and partly of free will. You cannot make the genius, but you can improve or destroy it, and most men and women possess tho assets which can be turned into success.

"What are tho qualities which make for success':" ho asks. "They are three: Judgment, Industry, and Health, and perhaps £he greatest of these is judgment. . * . Genius goes to the heart of a matter like an arrow from a bow, but judgment is the quality which learns from the world what the world has to teach, and then goes one better. . . , But judgment may prove a sterile capacity if it is not accompanied by industry. . . . The real trouble about industry is to apply it in the right direction—and it is therefore the servant of judgment. The truo secret of industry well applied is concentration, and there are many wellknown ways of learning that art—the most potent handmaiden of success." Health and Happiness. On the subject of health "tho foundation of judgment and industry" the author states that the future lies with the people who will take exercise, but not too much exercise. "The danger of the athelete is to believe that in kicking a goal he has won the game of life." Near the toinple of success stands the temple of happiness to which the 6ucoessful man cannot have entrance because he fails to follow the three groat rules: "To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly." Justice " another owrd for honesty in practice and intention," must be something more profound than the acceptance of the crude dictum that honesty is the best policy —" which is often interpreted! to mean that it is a mistake to go to gaoL" It must be a mental hamV-a fixed intention to be fair in dealing with money or politics; a natural desire to bo just and to interpret all bargains and agreements in the spirit, { as wall as in the letter.

Of the element of luck Lord Beaverbrook refutes tlto " dangerous delusion" that some peoplo are born lucky and others unlucky, as though sorao Fortune presided at their birth and that, irrespective of all merits, success goes to those on whom fortune smiles and defeat to those on whom she, frowns. The belief in imagined tendencies of chance as are seen at Monte Carlo is described as " a nightmare of the mind peculiarly unfavourable to success in business. . . . The bank at Monte Carlo will always beat the individual if he stays long enough. . . My advice to any man would be ' Never play rouletto at all; but if you must play, hold the oagnotto (which wins three per cent, on every spin).' "

Industry and Judgment. The author refers to the type who consistently refuse opportunities because they are not good enough for them, and who in middle life develop the disease known as " the genius of the untried." " Eminent men often act upon what appears to be instinc," he says, "but in truth, they have absorbed, ( ihrough a careful and continuous study of events, so much knowledge, that their minds reach a conclusion automatically. . . Living captains of modern industry and finance— Jnchape, Pirrie, Cowdray, Levcrhulme, and McKenna-— believed in industry, not in fortune, and in judgment rather than in chance." One essay is devcted to the importance of restraint and moderation upon which judgment, industry, and health, largely depend. " The days of the brilliant debauchee arc over" says Lord Beaverbrook when alluding to the fact that such statesmen as Fox and Bolingbroko competed only with equals " in the art of gentle debauchery." "Politicians," he proceeds, " no longer retire at forty to nurse the gout. ... A man without a digestion is likely to be a man without a heart. Political and financial courage spring as much from the nerves or the stomach as from the brain. And without courage no politician or businessman is worth anything. Moderation, therefore, is the secret of success." He mentions Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. McKenna, and Mr. Gordon Selfridge as men who aro strict devotees of the simplo life. Money, and Making It. Speaking of money, he says that apart irom two facudties —character in acquirement, and power in use—it has little value .md is just as likely to be a curse as a blessing. "For this reason the money-master will rare little for leaving i vast wealth to hi? descendants. He knows that thev would be better mm for going down stripped into the strugg,-. with no inheritance but that of brains i and character. Wealth without either the | wish, the brains, or the power to use it, ' is often the medium through which men pamper the flesh tnrougli good living, and the mind with insanity, until death, operating through the liver, hurries the fortunate youth into an early grave. The author lays down a number of broad rules which should govern the young man who, starting with small things, is determined to go en to great ones. The first essential is the trading instinct, the knowledge and sense of the real value of anv article. . ■ • "The young man who will walk through lifo developing the capacity for determining values, and then correc'ting his judgments by his information, is the man who will succeed in business." Another essential is the economic conduct of the business. "Too many men spend thoir lives in laying down 'pipe lines' for future profits which may not arrive, or only arrive for some new-comer. Thero is nothing like sticking to one lino, of business until you have mastered it. Do not try to cut too wide a swath " Depression not Disaster. " The stability of credit," says the writer, " becomes the watchword of high finance. Thus the great money master will not believe that periods of depression are of necessity ruinous. It is truo that no great profits will be made in such years of depression. But the lean years will not last for ever. Industry during the period of deflation goes through a process like thai, of an over-fat man taking a Turkish bath. The extravagances are eliminated, new invention and energy spring up to meet the call of necessity, 'and when the boom years come again, thev find industry like a highlytrained at'hlote, ready to pour out the goods, and pay the wages.' A man whose own education was of a most rudimentary character, the author tells young men never to believe that success 'cannot come to them because they hav o not been educated in the orthodox and regular fashion. "The public schools." ho declares, " turn out a type— the individual turns out himself. In the hour of action it is probable that the individual will defeat the type."

[" Surcese," by Lord Bo»T«rbrook, Stanley Paul and Co., LondoaO