THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 52

THE SKETCHER

LORD INVERFORTH: A LEADER FROM THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS. By E. T. Ravmoxii, in the World’s Work. Lord Inverforth, who until recently was known as Mr Andrew Weir, is a Lowland Scot, born, as a Scottish admirer put it, in “the lang toon of Kirkcaldy.” Now a Lowland Scot is not what people (mostly with the vaguest idea of what it means) call a “Celt.” We must not be misled by that quaint historical accident which lias made the tartan (which the Lowland Scot of 200 years ago regarded

as the uniform of a thief) the symbol of Scottish national pride. The Lowland Scot is simply an exaggerated Englishman, with just a touch of something not English, something clear and logical and intellectually thoroughgoing which derives, perhaps, from the long Scottish connection with France, and has certainly been strengthened by the French-made religion of Scotland. The Lowland Scot, like the Frenchman, tends to extremes. ' If he is religious, he makes religion a passion, and even a hobby ; if he happens to be a sceptic, he is complete and aggressive in his atheism. There is no Radical so Radical as a Scottish Radical, but. on the other hand, the Scottish Tory is the bitterest of all Tories. Glasgow, as the papers every day remind us, is the seat of a specially virulent cult of Communism ; but there is no place where the extreme doctrines of Manchester individualism are more tenaciously held. Scottish caution is proverbial, but in certain circumstances few people are so daring and even reckless as the Scot.

In a word, whatever is either good or bad in the English character may be found in intensified form north of the Tweed, and this tendency makes Scotland a land, morally as well as physically, of sharp contrasts. If the Lowland Scot is an exaggerated Englishman, Lord Inverforth is an exaggerated Lowland Scot. Those qualities of the race which are developed in him reach almost tire emphasis of a caricature. One kind of Scot is prone to taciturnity ; Lord. Inverforth is almost tongue-tied in public, and though lie can on occasion expand in a private circle, his general part is that of the listener who occasionally interjects a shrewd, ironic, and sometime disconcertingly apposite word. The Scot is usually given to concentration, whether the object of his choice be theology or whisky. Lord Inverforth carries to an extreme concentration on

business. He plays no games, has no recreations, indulges no hobbies. Literature means little or nothing to him. The arts merely exist to add a touch of distinction to a wealthy man’s house. He is quite free from" that last infirmity of the modern millionaire, a craze for philanthropy. He has said many true and sensible things about the improvement of the relations of Capital and Labour. But they are all quite business-like things. The Bane of British Industry,— he told an interviewer some time ago. is suspicion, and that suspicion he would eradicate by a real system of profit-shar-ing—not “five pounds at Christmas.” He would like to make the workman as proud of his factory, and as much interested in its success, as the managing director. But lie has no visions of himself as the earthly Providence of his workmen. He sees the salvation of the world coming. if it is to come at all, not through the dreams of visiopa-ries and the theories of philanthropists, but by the rule of enlightened self-interest. There must, of course, be a place for the moral law ; Lord Inverforth is not one of those stupid materialists who ignore the value, for even purely material ends, of the spiritual element. But that is not his immediate business. He is in the world for another purpose, and furnished with other talents. As a business man he wisely sticks to business.

The career of this remarkable man owes nothing to -advantages of birth or inherited wealth. He was the son of parents just sufficiently well-to-do to give him the ordinary education of a small provincial town and to place him, at the age of 15, in the Kirkcaldy branch of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Here his development was rapid. Before young Weir was 20 he had removed to Glasgow’ and there, in the atmosphere of a great port, an early ambition assumed concrete form. As a lad young \\ eir had alwavs been intensely interested in ships. His ideal of happiness was tlie possession of a trading schooner going from one far-off island to another and gathering strange cargoes. It is an ideal common among British bovs, but usually fades after the possession of a little pocket monev has opened the key to less remote and bizarre gratifications. “Freezing to It.” But Y\ eir was far from an ordinary boy. Whatever failed to seize his fancy he never absorbed ; lie was the despair of lus schoolmaster so far as the elementary classics were concerned. But when once interested in any subject he showed himself as tenacious as Mark Twain’s bullpup. “Freeze to it, he would, not chaw, you understandwas the testimonial to that remarkable animal. From an early age Weir “froze to the idea of owning a ship or ships, and he managed to achieve bis ambition at an age when most young men are watching the clock for 6 o'clock to bring its relief of tenuis or flirtation. It was a little over 35 rears ago that Lord Inverforth founded the business which was to bring him fortune. He felt the ire was money in coasting sailing ships much larger in size than those then engaged in the trade, and he managed to get enough financial support to get the vessel which was in his mind. The veu-

tore was a great success, and after a few years “Andrew Weir and Co.” were the owners of a number of big “windjammers” earning great sums. Perhaps there was never a big business so economically managed, if we dissociate the word from ally association with parsimony. The ordinary ship-owner is an owner of ships—that and nothing more. Mr \\ eir was very much else. In the course of years iie accumulated a quite extraordinary fund of knowledge concerning the countries with which "he traded; he continually turned this knowledge to advantage, and insensibly the business expanded into a great mercantile as well as a great transport concern. Extension and Stabilisation.— As the profits grew they were reinvested ; no social ambition, no desire to figure in politics or municipal life, interKi’ed with the one object of extension and stabilisation. Steam gradually superseded sails, and the Bank Line, with its bead offices moved from Glasgow to .London, became one of the great modern shipping firms. But its presiding genius remained almost- as little known a figure to the general public as before. it was not until the war had run nearly two and a-half years of its course that Mr Weir began to he heard of. Mr Bonar Law, as a fellow-citizen of Glasgow, knew something of his remarkable qualities as an organiser, and brought him to the notice of Mr Lloyd George, who had just assumed supreme power. Someone was badly wanted to systematise the purchase of supplies for the armv. Would Mr M eir undertake the task? Mr Weir, in his cautious Scottish way. surveyed the new country. It was not the bigness of the undertaking that frightened him : to such a man the mere ma°r,itude of a task was a stimulus. He was also anxious to serve his country : he has since confessed that “labour for "the State had given him a deeper sense of satisfaction than he ever experienced in working for himself.”

But how far could he. with his practical training and blunt business methods accommodate himself to the tradition always of a Circumlocution Department or, what was still more to the purpose, how could he accommodate those wavs to Jus own? Then there was the question ot punhc speaking. He loathed speaking; be had hardly made a speech in his life. I here was another consideration which might well have weighed with many men, but waich weighed not at all with Mr ” die was immensely busy in his own tracte, and these was no trade capable of earning more profit during the" war than that of shipping. To" join the iO\ eminent would mean an enormous personal loss. But this loss was the one tiling he never considered. Of course he was in a, position not- to consider V lhe man who could afford to invest a million in a single sum during the “Tank” Bank campaign could also bear the cost nowever high, of obeying the call of patriotism. Still, ability "to bear a loss hi tio means always implies willingness and even in war-time such complete disinterestedness was rare.

Surveyor-general of Supply. The difficulties, such as they were were surmounted, and Mr Andrew Weir went to the Mar Office as Surveyor-general of oup ply. Tiie re his influence was as omekly felt- as it was quietly asserted. He spent- six weeks in a preliminary investigation of the system, and ‘then started to reorganise it. In another six weeks he had the whole machinery responsive to his slightest touch, and this without having created any kind of friction. Hustle, said Mr Asquith, in a criticism or the methods of the Government which succeeded his own, “is not alwavs business ” Mr Weir was the exact opposite ot the mere hustler, and the completes! conceivable exponent of the pure business idea. He was never to bo detected in a hurry or a flurry. To everybody who called at the War Office on a serious errand he was accessible; and he would put through in five minutes matters w bich in the ordinary course would have occupied weeks of reference backwards and forwards.

He himself stuck to the desk from halfpast 9 in the morning to 7 in the evening, lunching in his office. But to his subordinates life under his rule was rather easier than before. The volume of business had immensely increased, but the improvement in system had been more than proportionate.

To the nation Lord Inverforth’s knowledge and method were invaluable. It was he who introduced the system of “costing” by which manufacturers of war material and dealers in food and raw material were prevented from making unconscionable profits. The first thing was to get control of supplies, and im his own authority Mr Weir bought up the Australian wool clip for three rears at a cost of 259 millions sterling. With such a grip on materials the rest was easy : would-be harpies were forced to accept fair terms of profit, or they were cut off from supplies. Moreover, pressure could be brought to bear on recalcitrant firms through the Defence of the Realm Act. lhe Courage of Knowledge.—Every biographer of Disraeli dwells on the courage shown by him in purchasing, without Parliamentary authorisation, the Suez Canal shares ot the cost of a very few millions. The courage shown by this‘Glasgow ship-owner was much more considerable, for altogether he committed the country to an expenditure more than half the size of our former debt. But, as I said, the Scot, if he has in many respects an overplus of caution, can also be on occasion the most adventurous of men. The fact was licit Mr Weir liad the courage of his knowledge. He knew, as no other man, the commercial conditions of the wnrlld. It was little less than providential that we had at this time one who for years had made a hobby of the study of markets far and near. Knowledge in this sense is really power, and with it what would be sheer recklessness in the uninformed becomes merely an act of high moral courage. The pure Ease was

an act of very great pluck. But Mr Weir probably rent his £250,000,000 cable with no more emotion than he signed some small contract for the supply of tintacks. His first aim as Surveyor-general of Supply was efficiency. His second was economy. Just as in his own infant business he had set his face against any kind of waste, so in controlling the public purchases he did not scorn even “candle-end economies.” With most Ministers the effect of dealing in hundreds of millions was to induce contempt for small savings. Mr Weir was as keen on looking after the little taps and leakages as the great. Thus he saved £23,000 a year by snipping just a trifle off the Highlander’s kilt, and £BO,OOO a year by slightly reducing tiie length of the drawers worn by soldiers of the line. Responsible for everything required hv the army, except actual munitions of war. his purchases ranged from buttons by the hundred million to barbed wire by the thousand mile. During a single rear 8.000.000 khaki caps were bought,' 90.000,000 flannel tins of milk. In regard to all things the most zealous care was taken to save the taxpayer, and a salvage system was established for the recovery of all the usable debris of the cam ns.

In one particular Mr Weir’s enthusiasm was perhaps mistaken. Among the articles -directed to he saved were rabbitskins. But the rablntskins refused to accommodate themselves to the iron will of the dictator of supplies. The troops used to save them for a season, but generally before the collectors had arrived a fatigue party had had to be detailed to put underground this potential wealth and actual nuisance. After Buying Came Selling. After the war Mr Weir (now raised to the Peerage as Lord Inverforth) became Minister of Munitions, and, instead of buying, it became his business to sell on a large scale. It was a job no man. or body of men, could possibly accomplish faultlessly. The war stores to be disposed of consisted of every imaginable variety of commodity, and were scattered over the greater part of the civilised world. Some mistakes were inevitable. But the disposal of the stores was, in fact, scarcely less a marvel of organisation than the accumulation of them. Even the so-called Slough white elephant, which brought Lord Inverforth the greatest share of criticism, was sold at a profit. Such results could only be possible to a man of great knowledge, great shrewdness, great method, and great integrity. It is on these qualities that Lord Inverforth s business success has been built up from the first . 11 is broad, good-natured, but masterful face, which would be almost German if it were not so very Scottish in the high cheek bones and the keen eyes, proclaims in its calm power a man so -confident in his own strength that he can afford to disdain all tricks and small stratagems. L°rd Inverforth has found Britain a land of opportunity, even in one of the eldest of all Britain’s modern industries. At no time during the last half-century would shipping _ seem on the face of it a favourable opening for a young adventurer of practically no capital and scarcely larger experience. But to men of Lord Inverforth’s kind there are opportunities in everything. If he had failed, in shipping he would assuredly have succeeded in something else. Ability equal to his own no doubt reaches the Bankruptcy Court every month. But when to ability is added an insatiable interest in business, a competent physique, and a sound character the result is never uncertain. TNE MYSTERIOUS BEGINNIROS OF LIFE. In the height of the struggle of the ladies of New York for their political emancipation there was a scientific man in that city who made a- disturbing discovery. He found that he could get real live frogs, perfect in every way, withoutfathers. Professor Jacques Loeb did not rush to the office of the suffrage ladies in Fifth avenue with this new proof of the superfluousness of the male. He is a scientific man of the grim, unemotional type, only dimly aware that-, outside his laboratory iu the Rockefeller Institute, there is a large world of men and women making a great fuss about their problems. His business is to penetrate the secret of life. And in the course of his brilliant and daring experiments on embryology lie had found that he had only to' prick the unfertilised egg of the frog with the point of a needle, and forthwith it began to develop into a tadpole. Some of his fatherless tadpoles developed into per-fectly-formed male frogs without the least trace of their ambiguous birth. If this could be done with the frog, which is a highly-organised animal, why not with the bird? Why not. . . . The prospect, as we said, is disturbing. A Long Step.— Tliis singular discovery, which astonished even cold-blooded men of science like Jacques Loeb, was the crown of 20 years of research and experiment. There are two ways of making scientific discoveries. One—the way preferred bv Professor Bergson and his many admirers—is to put pretty words together until you get a plausible and attractive formula, ’[’he other way is to work 10 hours a day. with microscope and dissect ingknife. for 20 years or so on some [.'articular branch of living Nature. And one of the branches of Nature which is most stubborn to the scrutiny of scientific men is that which wo study in the- science of embryology (the science of the development of organisms). It is in tliis study that- Loeb’s fatherless frogs have carried us a long step farther. Mystery more mysterious.— One of the most closely-guarded secrets of Nature is how the microscopic ovum (or egg) if a living thing develops into a full organism. The starting point- is a

tiny speck of plasm which is barely visible even to the sharpest eye, and which shows comparatively little structure even under the most powerful microscope. In the early days of science it was thought that the adult body must he entirely present, on a very minute scale, in the germ. The germ of a bird, for instance, would be a real bird of such proportions that we could not see the various organs. The modern microscope has made an end of all this nonsense, but it has made the mystery more mysterious Ilian ever. lhe germ-cell breaks into two, then four, and .so on. until* there is a cluster of cells like -a blackberry. Then nerve and muscle, stomach and lungs and brain, slowly take shape ; the most marvellous machine in the world is built up, in the course of a few weeks or months, out of the tiny germ, it has taken man 10,000 vears of civilisation to learn how to make (in the front part of a camera) a clumsy imitation of the front part of the eye. Vet the unconscious embryonic force.? build up in a week cr two tho magnificent eye of a bird ! lhe Sea-urchin in the Trough.— Even now we know very little about these forces. Popular novelists and certain types of social writers talk verv glibly about the laws of heredity, but ive"have only a few risky speculations on the subject. The embryonic machinery is so very slightly known to us that it is folly to base any educational or social proposal on any theory of heredity. For the last 20 years, however, physiologists have been attacking the mystery with great energy. One of the most convenient ways is to take the eggs of the star-fish or the seaurchin. \ou can keep them alive in a little trough of salt water under your microscope or lens, and you can watch the whole process of the building up of the body front a germ—and a marvellously interesting and mystifying process it is. 1 oil may also experiment with the elements. and that is where Loeb and his colleagues and pupils began their discoveries. The Stal'-fi.-h, Too.— Hundreds of thousands of experiments were made, and it was soon found that the services of the male star-fish or seaurchin could be dispensed with. A change in the chemical nature of the seawater in which the eggs floated was enough. Then it was found that it sufficed to prick the ovum with a needle. Frogs eggs also are easily operated upon, and so at last Professor Loeb came to make his remarkable discovery. He has not yet succeeded in getting fatherless organisms of a type higher than lhe frog, but he lives in hopes. A Toy I)og.— Fi 'em. the serious scientific point of view these things are important because they are part of a great effort that is being made to master tire mechanism of life. A few years ago a scientific man made a toy dog of a remarkable description. By merely flashing an electric torch on it he could cause the dog to run in any direction lie chose. Two Tittle selenium-cells (very sensitive to light) represented the eyes, and they sent currents to the small battery inside which stood for the dog’s locomotive apparatus. This toy embodies discoveries which have made a great deal of the behaviour of animals clear to us. Why, for instance, does a moth circle round a candle, and eventually commit suicide in the flame? Ft cannot help itself. The light acts on its eyes and nervous system just as it acts on the professor’s toy dog. If the light falls more on one eye than on the other.

that side of the body-machine is worked more, and the moth circles round and round. We are slowly resolving the whole behaviour of insects and other animals into automatic responses of this kind.—John o’ London’s Weekly.