Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

“ Panic, therefore, whether external or internal, is an experience which tests at once the body, the mind, and the soul. The internal panic is an evil which can only be cured by a resolute application of the will and intellect to the subconscious self. The panic of a world suddenly convulsed in its markets is like a thunderstorm, sweeping from the mountains down the course of a river to where some town looks out on the bay. It comes in a moment from the wild, and passes as swiftly into the sea. It has the evanescence of a dream and yet all the force of reality. ”

“ The aeroplane battle occurred upon a morning warm and bright with sunshine. The conditions were admirable for flying and observing, and, as usual, a German Albatross took advantage of them. Soaring high against the warm blue of the sky, over Bailleul, over the headquarters of a division, over our brigades and trenches and back again, it glinted like silver in the morning sun. The snow-white blobs of bursting shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns followed its graceful sweeps and curves—followed and followed, but never caught it up; and thousands of our men stared after it. ”

“ Let us never for one moment forget that of all the mighty events in our history, none are greater than those through which we are passing to-day. Is an Empire like ours worth living for? Yes, and worth dying for, too. And it is something greater than it was a year ago. Indeed, it can never be quite the same again. The old order has in some measure passed away. Once for all it has been borne in upon the minds and souls of all of us that the great policies, which touch and control the issues of peace and war, concern more than the peoples of these islands. ”

“ But a business panic is, after all, a rare phenomenon—something a man need only have to face once in a lifetime. It is the panic in the mind of the individual which is the perpetual danger. How many men are there who let this perpetual fear of financial disaster gnaw at their minds like a rat in the dark? Those who only see the mask put on in the daytime would be astonished to know the number of men who lay awake at night quaking with fear at some imagined disaster, the day of which will probably never come. ”

“ It was as though an impenetrable curtain had fallen between the contending parties of infantry. The mud, the darkness, and the shells made every movement a failure. That such a state of affairs could be possible can only be understood by the insight of imagination or by an actual experience of the ground and the conditions. But a study of the photographs taken by aeroplanes makes it at least intelligible. Among the infinite traceries of lines, trenches new and old, which wrinkle the surface of the chart, the rims of the four great centre craters stand out ominous and distinct. ”

“ But it might not be amiss for a moment to allude to the remarkable circumstance that four great Overseas Dominions, self-governing Dominions of the Empire, have been actuated by a common impulse at this juncture—Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada! Why have all these great free nations sent their men from the remotest corners of the earth to fight side by side with you of this island home in this quarrel? Why in Canada do we see those who are the descendants of those who fought under Wolfe, and of those who fought under Montcalm, standing side by side in the battle-line of the Empire? ”

“ And from the point of view of real success in affairs the gambler is doomed in advance. It is a frame of mind which a man should discourage severely when he finds it within the citadel of his mind. It is a view which too frequently infects young men with more ambition than industry.
The view of Fortune as some shining goddess sweeping down from heaven and touching the lucky recipient with her pinions of gold dazzles the mind of youth. Men think that with a single stroke they will either be made rich for life or impoverished for ever. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the development of trench warfare and the reign of the machine-gun was so fatal a blow to German prospects that it is improbable that they would have declared war at all if they had thought it anything more than a bare possibility. To them it was a matter of life and death to keep the armies on the move—life if they could crush the French and British armies in the field and then turn back on Russia; death if they were condemned to a static defence while the invincible resources of the Allies in men and money accumulated slowly on either front. ”

“ As it ebbs, the known landmarks show again, and we have leisure to gather observations of comrades who were borne backwards or forwards on the flood.
The wave that fell on us round Ypres has baptised the Dominion into nationhood—the mere written word, "Canada," glows now with a new meaning before all the civilised world. Canada has proved herself, and not unworthily; but those who survive of the men who have won us our world-right to pride, are too busy to trouble their heads about history. That may come in days of peace. The main outlines of the battle have been dealt with already. ”

“ The instinct for values, the habit of economy, the technique of business, are only three forms of the supreme quality of that judgment which is success.
For these reasons it is the first £10,000 which counts. There is the real struggle, the test of character, and the warranty of success. Youth and strength are given us to use in that first struggle, and a man must feel those early deals right down to the pit of his stomach if he is going to be a great man of business. They must shake the very fibre of his being as the conception of a great picture shakes an artist. ”

“ Our vision, narrowed a little by direct concentration on the progress of the engagement, and our ears dulled a little by the din of the conflict, we are prone to overlook the fact that this war is waged amid scenes only a short time ago devoted to the various avocations of peace, and that on the Western Front, especially, the armies of the Allies are oftentimes inextricably mixed with the civilian element and the civilian population.
A wave of battle is like a wave of the sea. While it advances, one is only conscious of its rush and roar, only concerned to measure how far it may advance. ”

“ The sharp edges of conflict are stationary—sunk in the muddy trenches and nailed down to machine-gun emplacements. But while the fronts of the great war machine are thus held, they are never still. The wear and tear of conflict go on day and night, week after week, month after month. Behind the infantry in their earthy strongholds the great guns of the artillery hide, long-sighted and tireless. ”

“ Politics are for the few; they are a game, a fancy, or an inheritance. Leaving out the man of genius who flares out, perhaps, once or twice in a century, the amount of ability which enables a man to cut a very respectable figure in a Cabinet is extraordinarily low, compared with that demanded in the world of industry and finance. The politician will never believe this, but it is so.
The battles of the market-place are real duels, on which realities of life and death and fortune or poverty and even of fame depend. Here men fight with a precipice behind them, not a pension of £2,000 a year. ”

“ The trenches in the first firing line were little better than scattered drains—behind was the crater barrier—underfoot were the mud and the water, and above the unceasing whine of the shells. The air was heavy with a damp mist, even by day, and by night all objects were magnified and uncertain till a shell-hole appeared a crater, an advance of fifty yards like one of 500 yards, and an hour grew into years! The battle was fought in "No Man's Land"—a débris of shattered trees, sudden pool-holes, and upraised earth, "where no man comes, nor hath come since the making of the world." ”

“ It gives to man all that the natural man desires: the opportunity of exercising his activities to the full; the sense of power; the feeling that life is a slave, not a master; the knowledge that some great industry has quickened into life under the impulse of a single brain.
To each his own particular branch of this difficult art. The artist knows one joy, the soldier another; what delights the business man leaves the politician cold. But however much each section of society abuses the ambitions or the morals of the other, all worship equally at the same shrine. ”

“ The grief that we suffer is more new to us than to the English, who have paid the heavy tolls of Mons, the retreat, the battle of Neuve Chapelle, and the first attack on Ypres, and, like ourselves, have prepared and are preparing men to fill the gaps; but through their grief and ours runs the unbreakable pride of a race that has called itself Imperial before it knew what Empire signified, or had proved itself within its own memory by long and open-handed sacrifice. ”

“ Scattered beneath this innocent mantle of green are innumerable shell holes, old crumbling trenches full of the memories and odours of death, graves and graveyards marked by the crosses commemorating the long-forgotten captains once well loved by their regiments, and of humble privates perhaps still remembered. The torn and trampled equipment, the empty ammunition boxes, the remains here and there of shattered bodies, which human care and energy had been unable to bury, all await the healing tide of Nature which will cover them in its due time. ”

“ It is the end to which turbulent and ambitious youth should devote itself in order that it may attain to happiness in that period of middle-age which still gives to assured success its real flavour. Youth is the time of hope; old age is the time for looking back on the pleasures and achievements of the past—when success or failure may seem matters of comparative unimportance. Successful middle-age stands between the two. Its calm is not the result either of senility or failure. It represents that solid success which enables a man to adventure into fresh spheres without any perturbation. ”

“ The battle which raged for so many days in the neighbourhood of Ypres was bloody, even as men appraise battles in this callous and life-engulfing war. But as long as brave deeds retain the power to fire the blood of Anglo-Saxons, the stand made by the Canadians in those desperate days will be told by fathers to their sons; for in the military records of Canada this defence will shine as brightly as, in the records of the British Army, the stubborn valour with which Sir James Macdonnel and the Guards beat back from Hougoumont the Division of Foy and the Army Corps of Reille. ”

“ The shock of squadrons, the bayonet charge, or the exchange of point-blank volleys between opposing battalions has become familiar to us in history-books, and the artist can draw them to the life. It is easy to grasp the recoil of a column down the hill-side under the furious impetus of an overwhelming assault. But to be killed in sections by high explosives and machine-guns in a trench which is rapidly ceasing to exist, so that the agony is prolonged for hours, is an ordeal more difficult to grasp. ”

“ Practical success alone makes early middle-age the most pleasurable period of a man's career. What has been worked for in youth then comes to its fruition.
It is true that brains alone are not influence, and that money alone is not influence, but brains and money combined are power. And fame, the other object of ambition, is only another name for either money or power.
Never was there a moment more favourable for turning talent towards opportunity and opportunity into triumph than Great Britain now presents to the man or woman whom ambition stirs to make a success of life. ”

“ You must picture the British Army in the field, spread out like a fan. The long, wavy edge of the fan is the line of men in the firing trenches, at the very forefront of affairs, often within a stone's-throw of the opposing German line. Some hundreds of yards behind this firing line lie the support trenches, also filled with men. The men in the firing and supporting trenches exchange places every forty-eight hours. After a four days' spell they all retire for four days' rest, fresh troops taking their places as they move out. ”

“ Finance, Commerce, and Industry are, under modern conditions, spheres open to the talent of any individual. The lack of education in the formal sense is no bar to advancement. Every young man has his chance. But will he practise industry, economy, and moderation, avoid arrogance and panic, and know how to face depression with a stout heart? Even if he is a genius, will he know how not to soar with duly restrained wings? ”

“ It was not given to the 2nd Division to take a part in one of those glittering charges which figure so largely in Press reports and so rarely in actions in the field. Here were no bayonets flashing in the sun, no shouts of a triumphant infantry, but a long struggle against dirt and darkness, the terror of the high explosive, and the sharp spitting of the machine-guns. It is easy to think of war as one triumph reaching to another, and the historians gloss over easily the failure of their national arms. ”

“ What a quiet, easy-going holiday was this, dodging about in the air, a clear mark for the enemy's guns! But, to tell the truth, the British flying men and machines are very rarely hit. Flying in war-time is not so perilous as it looks, though it needs much skill and a calm, collected spirit.
At length the din of the gunfire ceased, and we knew that the British troops were rushing from their trenches to deal with the Germans, whose nerve the guns had shaken. Astounded as they had been by our artillery fire, the Germans were still more amazed by the rapidity of the infantry attack. ”

“ The main features are still those of Flanders—the slightly rolling flat where the transparent richness of the crops which spring from the sand and the clay seems no deeper than the paint of a fresco on the wall, and the scraggy trees and ragged woods mock one with a delusive memory of forest cool and shade. As the army grows the winter draws on, and the fine, hot autumn days and brilliant nights with the moon high in the heavens behind the trenches turn to the rains of November and the mists and frosts of Christmas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gifts of brilliant platform rhetoric, the arts of partisan debate, the instinct for a conquering election issue, all these have dwindled before the cruel perspective of war into their true insignificance. It is felt here in England to-day, and not least by some of us who are ourselves chargeable in the matter, that it will be long before the politicians at home clear themselves at the inquest of the nation from the charge of having endangered the safety of the Empire by their absorption in those domestic dissensions which now seem at once so remote and so paltry. ”

“ Eloi through Vierstraat to Kemmel, and from Kemmel and Petit Bois to Wulverghem, Neuve Eglise to Hutte and Ploegsteert, and everywhere line upon line of Canadian trenches score the ground like a succession of gigantic furrows. Far beyond the line extends till it strikes the grey seas of the Channel on the north and the snow-clad Alps on the south. The labour of these vast field-works would have built the Canadian Pacific, and one may wonder how long these gashes in the earth will survive the passions and ideals of the men who created them. ”

“ A study of military history shows that all great leaders who have inspired troops to resist to the death when disaster appeared to be certain, and all great leaders who have victoriously led assaults which seemed the very children of despair, have had the capacity of making what in armies is known as a "soldier's speech."
It is an art which cannot be cultivated. It is the instinctive knowledge of precisely the right road to the soldier's heart at the supreme moment when an appeal may make all the difference between success or failure. ”

“ Until the mind of youth has adjusted itself between the two extremes and formed a technique which is not so much independent of either tendency as inclusive of both, youth cannot hope for great success.
The evils which pure stubbornness brings in its train are perfectly clear. Men cling to a business indefinitely in the fond wish that a loss may yet be turned into a profit. They hope on for a better day which their intelligence tells them will never dawn. For this attitude of mind stupidity is a better word than stubbornness, and a far better word than courage. ”