GREATEST INFLUENCE.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15128, 20 February 1922, Page 3

GREATEST INFLUENCE.

SOME TRIBUTES. THE GUIDE OF EARLY DAYS. The old saying that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” is as true now as ever it was. Almost every great man of the day can point to the ideals set by his mother as the inspiration which guided him to the goal of success. Mr. Lloyd George might never have risen to be Prime Minister of Great Britain had it not been for his mother. “My mother had a hard struggle to bring up her fatherless children,” he 'declares, “but she never complained. It was not until long after that we were able to appreciate how fine had been her spirit.” A SWEET MEMORY. The memory of a mother’s loving care is often a spur to great things, and, as in the ease of Mr. Thomas A. Edison, the world-famous inventor, the childish impressions of a sweet parent often urge one to strive to live up to her nobleness. “I did not have my mother long,” Mr. Edison writes, “but she cast over me an influence which has lasted all my life. If it had not been for her appreciation and her faith in me at a critical time in my experience I should never have become a great inventor.” Lord Tennyson, the son of the late Poet Laureate, and a former Governor of Australia, pays perhaps .the finest tribute of all when he writes : “As her son I cannot allow . myself full utterance about her whom I loved as perfect mother. With her ‘tender spiritual nature’ and instinctive nobility of thought, she was ever a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic counsellor. / GREAT AID TO SUCCESS.

“By her selfloss devotion, by her quiet sense of humour, by her faith, she was a help to the utmost in hours of depression, and sorrow, and I can say in my father’s'words : . . Happy ho

With such a mother! faith in womankind j Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him.” In business life in particular _ a mother’s steadying influence in earlier years counts a great deal, a fact which is acknowledge by Lord Kinnaird. the great banker and financier, and President of the Football Association. “It is impossible to compute the debt I owe to my mother,” Lord Kinnaird writes to us". “It is incalculable. But the fact that she visited the nursery every night, whatever might be her engagements, and prayed with her children. and the astonishing fact that, during all the years I was at Eton, she wrote to me every day, are some measure of her anxiety to lay the foundations of character deep and strong.” The guiding care of a loving mother sometimes makes all the difference between failure and success, a sentiment with which Sir Harry Lauder entirely agrees. WORK AND HONESTY. “I owe such - a lot to my mother Ido not know where to. begin,” he declares. “In the first place, she taught me to respect my father—that father was head of the house. She taught me a simple prayer, and always to be honest, whether at work or play. Certainly I never had much time for play, for she not only taught me to work, but also that work was always man’s best friend.” Similar testimony is to he found wherever there are great and famous men. For instance, Mr. Gordon Selfridge, the business magnate, believes that “ a mother’s love is the most beautiful, most lasting, most unselfish, most forgiving which our finite minds are capable of conceiving.” Again, Sir Oliver Lodge,’O.M., the great scientist, declares that his mother \Vns “an extraordinarily com. potent woman, and most of the brains and energy possessed by her children. probably came from her side of the family.” Although it is forty years since his mother died, the Rev. Dinsdale T. Young (who preaches to the largest regular congregation m the world) finds inspirations even yet in her memory. “ Her sweet and uplifting influence has-been perpetually with me,” lie writes, “ and was never more effective than it is to-day. Among the things which I owe to her is a love of good books, a keen delight in the humorous aspects of life, and a desire to do everybody a good turn as I have opportunity. ” VALUE YOUR PARENTS. While Sir Hall Caine, the author, pays tribute to the “stoical unselfishness of his father,” the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford, so long known to tens of thousands of working people as the popular vicar of St. James the Less at Bethnal Green, testifies to the influence of both his parents. “I have never learned anything in my to equal in value what my mother and father taught me in the earliest years of my life,” he writes. “The one taught me to pray and the other to read my Bible. They gave me an example whicn is before my eyes this day.” ...

Although a father’s influence goes a long way in moulding a son’s character, it is usually the mother’s part to help and encourage the hoy on the road to real success. The father’s outlook on life is natur. ally somewhat material, and,what helpful advice lie has to give deals more with practical problems a young man may have to face. A mother’s influence usually is more spiritual; and it is loving bond between mother and son that, once forged, lives for ever as an incentive to great things, breeding noble thoughts and actions in a young man’s life. General Brain well Booth had a great father and a great mother. “As a boy,” says the General of the Salvation Army, “I sometimes complained to my mother about my muchpatched knickers, and the merriment they excited in my schoolfellows. ‘They will think we are so poor!’ I said. ‘Well, why should you wish them to think anything else?’ she said. ‘We are poor!’ . EXAMPLE THROUGH LIFE. “I owe more to that splendid love of reality in her than I can tell. My mother was a high example of unselfish devotion carried by a thoughtful personality into every department of an active life.” “A mother is a mother still, the

holiest thing alive,?’ wrote Coleridge and it was perhaps the thought of all he owed to a devoted parent that prompted him to pen these words. The value of a mother—and a good wife —is sumed up by the Rt. Hon. John Burns in a few lines : “Mother and wife, they are the best friends I ever had Character and career—all is due to their guidance and influence.” / ———— f