be a failure as an active agent. It would not be difficult to find the
exact converse to the case. The greatest of all the editors of big
London newspapers will fail entirely to appreciate a careful and logical
statement of a situation when it is subjected to him. But place before
him the raw material and the implements of his own profession, and his
infallible instinct for news will enable him to produce a newspaper far
transcending that which his more logical critic could have achieved.

Leaving aside a few strange exceptions, a musician is not a soldier, a
barrister not a stockbroker, a poet not a man of business, or a
politician a great organiser. Anyone who had strayed in youth to the
wrong profession and failed might yet prove himself an immense success
in another, and these broad distinctions at the top ramify downwards
until the general truth is equally applicable to all the subdivisions of
business and even to all the administrative sections of particular
firms.

To take a single practical instance, there is the department of
salesmanship and the department of finance. Salesmanship requires, above
all, the spirit of optimism. That same spirit carried into the sphere of
finance might ruin a firm. The success in one branch might therefore
well be the failure in the other, and vice versa. No young man,
therefore, has failed until he has succeeded.

If I had to choose one single and celebrated instance of this doctrine I
should find it in the career of Lord Reading, Viceroy of India.

It may be objected that, as he is of the Jewish race and religion, his
is not a fair test case by which to try the abilities and aptitudes of
the young men of Great Britain. I do not accept the distinction. The