IV

MODERATION

Judgment, Industry, and Health, as the instruments of success, depend largely on a fourth quality, which may be called either restraint or moderation.  The successful men of these arduous days are those who control themselves strictly.

Those who are learned in the past may point out exceptions to this rule.  But Charles James Fox or Bolingbroke were only competing with equals in the art of genteel debauchery.  Their habits were those of their competitors.  They were not fighting men who safeguarded their health and kept a cool head in the morning.  It is impossible to imagine to-day a leader of the Opposition who, after a night of gambling at faro, would go down without a breakfast or a bath to develop an important attack on the Government.  The days of the brilliant debauchee are over.  Politicians no longer retire for good at forty to nurse the gout.  The antagonists that careless genius would have to meet in the modern world would be of sterner stuff.

The modern men of action realise that a sacrifice of health is a sacrifice of years—­and that every year is of value.  They protect their constitutions as the final bulwark against the assault of the enemy.  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 business man is worth anything.  Moderation is, therefore, the secret of success.

And, above all, I would urge on ambitious youth the absolute necessity of moderation in alcohol.  I am the last man in the world to be in favour of the regulation of the social habits of the people by law.  Here every man should be his own controller and law-giver.  But this much is certain:  no man can achieve success who is not strict with himself in this matter; nor is it a bad thing for an aspiring man of business to be a teetotaller.

Take the case of the Prime Minister.  No man is more careful of himself.  He sips a single glass of burgundy at dinner for the obvious reason that he enjoys it, and not because it might stimulate his activities.  He has given up the use of tobacco.  Bolingbroke as a master of manoeuvres would have had a poor chance against him.  For Bolingbroke lost his nerve in the final disaster, whereas the Prime Minister could always be trusted to have all his wits and courage about him.  Mr. Lloyd George is regarded as a man riding the storm of politics with nerves to drive him on.  No view could be more untrue.  In the very worst days of the war in 1916 he could be discovered at the War Office taking his ten minutes’ nap with his feet up on a chair and discarded newspapers lying like the debris of a battle-field about him.  It would be charitable to suppose that he had fallen asleep before he had read his newspapers!  He even takes his golf in very moderate doses.  We are often told that he needs a prolonged holiday, but somewhere in his youth he finds inexhaustible reserves of power which he conserves into his middle age.  In this way he has found the secret of his temporary Empire.  It is for this reason that the man in command is never too busy to see a caller who has the urgency of vital business at his back.