Success | Page 7

any man the portals of the temple of
success. Young men must advance boldly to the central shrine along
the arduous but well-tried avenues of Judgment and Industry.

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
débris 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.
The Ex-Leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Bonar Law, however
much he may differ from the Premier in many aspects of his
temperament, also finds the foundation of his judgment in exercise and

caution. As a player of games he is rather poor, but makes up in
enthusiasm for tennis what he lacks in skill. His habits are almost
ascetic in their rigour. He drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook
ever conceived would be wasted on him. A single course of the plainest
food suffices his appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced
with a long meal. His pipe, his one relaxation, never far absent, seems
to draw him with a magic attraction. As it was, his physical resources
stood perhaps the greatest strain that has been imposed on any public
man in our time. From the moment when he joined the first Coalition
Government in 1915 to the day when he laid down office in 1921 he
was beset by cares and immersed in labours which would have
overwhelmed almost any other man. Neither this nor succeeding
Coalition Governments were popular with a great