RAPID RISES TO FAME.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14650, 2 March 1918, Page 2

RAPID RISES TO FAME.

WELL-KNOWN CELEBRI'IIES TWENTY YEARS AGO.

To realise what dramatic revolutions Time can work in the lives of men one need only glance back through the relatively brief space of a score of years. Twenty years ago Mr Lloyd.George was a little-known London' solicitor, from whom the .Premiership seemed as remote as the. stars: and Mr "Bonar Law's only political experience was as debater in a Glasgow amateur .parliament, his sole recreation in a strenuous business life.

Sir Albert Stanley was a railwayman in America witb no more thought of political fame .than of flying, .to the moon. Sir Eric Geddes, who has blossomed into a general, an admiral, and ruler of the xving's Navy, had left a lumber-camp to do obscure and ill-paid wor.k on the Baltimore' and Ohio iiailway- and his clever brother, Sir Aucklan/i, had recently qualified as a doctor, as a. preliminary to doing surgeon's woili- in the South African War. , ,!>r Arldison was a popular lecturer at St. Batholomew's. Hospital, JUondorij'aud 'fjovd■ lihondda was too.immqrsod in i.sc management ox Welsh collieries and the amassing of a fortune to give a thought'.to'politics. Sir Edward Carson had turned ; Ins- back on Ireland and was just beginning to win fame and fortune at the English Bar; and Mr Winston Churchill was a gallant Hussar officer, who had won.some •little fame by- his ...briliant descriptions of the■'fighting irr Cuba. In 1897 Sir Douglas Haig was a~ captain of Hussars, better known in fashionable society than in. the Army; and it was not until'a- year later that he "won his spurs'.' in the Soudan. Even Lord Frencn, who had reached colonel's i rank, was utterly unknown to the "man in the street;" and Sir William i Robertson, who had joined the 16th i Lancers as a private in 1877, was an j obscure captain. Sir .John .lellicoe, proud of his commander's stripes, and known as a .-clever seaman who would, probably "make good" some day, had still to wait for his first recognition in the Boxer rebellion. And Sir David Beatty little dreamt that he would one day command the •world's greatest fleet in the -world's greatest war/ when, a score of year? ago ? he was wearing his lieutenant's uniform and scarcely known outside iris own ship.