The Times Great Lives

Popularly he was supposed to have the vice of inconsistency. Serious students of his work are not inclined to endorse this estimate. His views changed in the sense that they developed. He would perceive that some particular theory had a wider application. He was always feeling his way to the larger synthesis. The new generalization grew out of the old. But he regarded words as private property which he would define and redefine. Unlike most professional theorists, he was very quick to adapt the application of theory to changes in the circumstances. Speed of thought was his characteristic in all things. In general conversation he loved to disturb complacency, and when, as so often, there were two sides to a question he would emphasize the one more disturbing to the company present.

His Treatise on Probability is a notable work of philosophy. Although using mathematical symbols freely, it does not seek to add to the mathematical theory of probability, but rather to explore the philosophical foundations on which that theory rests. Written clearly and without pedantry, it displays a vast erudition in the history of the subject which was reinforced by and reinforced his activities as a bibliophile.

Keynes had on certain occasions an appreciable influence on the course of history. His resignation from the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and his publication a few months later of The Economic Consequences of the Peace had immediate and lasting effects on world opinion about the peace treaty. The propriety of his action became a matter of controversy. Opinions still differ on the merits of the treaty, but about the point with which he was particularly concerned, reparations, there is now general agreement with his view that the settlement – or lack of settlement – was ill-conceived and likely to do injury to the fabric of the world economy. His subsequent polemic against the gold standard did not prevent a return to it in 1925, but largely added to the ill repute of that system in wide circles since. It was mainly through his personal influence some years later that the Liberal Party adopted as their platform in the election of 1929 the proposal to conquer unemployment by a policy of public works and monetary expansion.

In two wars he had a footing in the British Treasury. The idea of deferred credits was contained in the pamphlet entitled ‘How to Pay for the War’, which he published in 1940. From 1943 he played a principal part in the discussions and negotiations with the United States to effect a transition from war to peace conditions of trade and finance which avoided the errors of the last peace, and to establish international organization which would avoid both the disastrous fluctuations and the restrictions which characterized the inter-war period. He was the leader of the British experts in the preparatory discussions of 1943 and gave his name to the first British contribution – ‘the Keynes Plan’ – to the proposals for establishing an international monetary authority. In July, 1944, he led the British delegation at the Monetary Conference of the United and Associated Nations at Bretton Woods, where an agreed plan was worked out. He was the dominant figure in the British delegation which for three months, from September to December, 1945, hammered out the terms of the American Loan Agreement, which he defended brilliantly in the House of Lords. He was appointed in February Governor of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and in these capacities had just paid a further visit to the United States, whence he returned only two weeks ago. These continuous exertions to advance the cause of liberality and freedom in commercial and financial policies as a means to expand world trade and employment imposed an exceptionally heavy and prolonged strain which, in view of his severe illness just before the war, Lord Keynes was physically ill-fitted to bear.

His life-long activities as a book-collector were not interrupted, even by war. His great haul of unpublished Newton manuscripts on alchemy calls for mention. He identified an anonymous pamphlet entitled ‘An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature’, acquired by his brother, Mr Geoffrey Keynes, as being the authentic work of David Hume himself. He had it reprinted in 1938, and it will no doubt hereafter be eagerly studied by generations of philosophers. During the second war his hobby was to buy and then, unlike many bibliophiles, to read rare Elizabethan works. His interest in and encouragement of the arts meant much to him. From undergraduate days he had great friendships with writers and painters and, while his activities brought him in touch with many distinguished people of the academic world and public life, he was probably happiest with artistic people. At one period he was at the centre of the literary circle which used to be known as ‘Bloomsbury’ – Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and their intimate friends. More than fame and worldly honours he valued the good esteem of this very cultivated and fastidious society.

And finally there was the man himself – radiant, brilliant, effervescent, gay, full of impish jokes. His entry into the room invariably raised the spirits of the company. He always seemed cheerful; his interests and projects were so many and his knowledge so deep that he gave the feeling that the world could not get seriously out of joint in the end while he was busy in it. He did not suffer fools gladly; he often put eminent persons to shame by making a devastating retort which left no loophole for face-saving. He could be rude. He did not expect others to bear malice and bore none himself in the little or great affairs of life. He had many rebuffs but did not recriminate. When his projects were rejected, often by mere obstructionists, he went straight ahead and produced some more projects. He was a shrewd judge of men and often plumbed the depths in his psychology. He was a humane man genuinely devoted to the cause of the common good.

Henry Ford

Motor manufacturer and idealist

7 April 1947

Mr Henry Ford, the motor-car manufacturer, who died suddenly at his home, Dearborn, near Detroit, on Monday night at the age of 83, was for many years one of the world’s outstanding individuals.

In his own sphere as a maker of machines Ford effected the greatest revolution of his day. It was due largely to him that the motor-car, instead of continuing for years to be a luxury for the rich, was brought speedily within the reach of comparatively humble folk. In the course of this accomplishment the process of mass production was carried to new and unheard-of lengths and a novel conception of its possibilities was created. The industrial empire which Ford’s imagination and drive established was in due course to yield him an immense fortune; but wealth was at no period his goal. He was in fact an emotional visionary, ignorant of much that quite ordinary people know, but with real good will for all and a power of handling the practical things of life which has never been surpassed. Thus for many years he was a continuing astonishment to his contemporaries, who, marvelling one day at his new designs for motor-cars or his new schemes for still vaster factories, would find him on the next with startling proposals for higher wages, shorter hours, or better methods of salesmanship, or, just as likely, attacking the bankers or preaching pacifism, bickering with his own Government, or at issue with organized labour. In all that he did or said moreover, he remained his independent and opinionative self, satisfied, as was indeed quite often true, that he was serving his age as successfully as he was supplying it with tractors, motor-cars, and aeroplanes.

Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863, on a farm at Dearborn, Michigan, the son of William Ford, a prosperous farmer, who was of Irish stock. His mother was of mixed Dutch and Scandinavian origin and had been adopted by one Patrick O’Hearn. He went to the local school, where he seemed a normal boy, good but not exceptionally brilliant at his studies. At an early age, however, he disclosed a remarkable mechanical bent and an eager curiosity in regard to the working of machines. At 17 he became an apprentice in a machine shop in Detroit, but after nine months he felt he had learned all he could there and went on to another firm. After a time his employment failed to satisfy him and he returned to Dearborn, reconciled to it by the fact that Clara Bryant, whom he married in 1888, was a neighbour. Years of happiness followed: but he nevertheless continued to be haunted by an early ideal of a machine which would do the heavy work of a farm. In the country he kept a machine shop of his own and worked in summer for a harvester company by repairing their portable farm engines. However, the promptings of his genius became too strong for him and eventually he decided to go back to Detroit where in 1890 he secured a post with the Detroit Edison Electric Company.

Ford had realized in his earlier Detroit days that the public were more interested in road vehicles than in tractors; but scheme as he would the weight of a steam engine had thwarted him. Then in an English paper, the World of Science, he had read of a ‘silent gas engine’ which used gas for fuel. A little later he had been asked to repair one of these Otto engines. Convinced by his study of it that its principles were sound, he had in 1887 built his first gas engine, and had kept on building more. After he returned to Detroit, however, he worked in his spare time on his first ‘gasoline buggy’, and in 1893 it was ready for public trial, at which it attained a speed of 25 miles an hour. In 1896 he began work on a second car. In 1899 he resigned his position and organized a local company in which, holding one sixth of the stock, he became chief engineer. The company made cars on the model of his first one. Ford, whose governing idea was to provide automobiles for the masses, was soon in disagreement with his associates, who thought chiefly of profits, and in 1902 he resigned, ‘determined never again to put myself under orders’. At that time the public interest was centred on racing cars and Ford determined to enter the racing field. He proved astonishingly successful with some racing machines of his design and thus drew attention to his own car. In 1903, therefore, he was able to found the Ford Motor Company with 12 shareholders and a capital of $100,000, of which $20,000 was put into the company, the only cash investment in its long career which did not come from earnings. In 1908 Ford himself became the controlling owner and president, and in 1924 he and his son, Edsel, were to acquire all the stock. Ford had long had his own ideas about quantity production, and with control in his own hands was able to put them into effect. Sales began to rise and his products to enter foreign markets. His success in the Scottish Reliability Trials of 1905 had already helped him considerably in establishing himself in Great Britain. He also developed a new agency policy which included an agreement to maintain service stations. The car itself had, moreover, been steadily improving, and in 1908 and 1909 his famous model ‘T’ was put on sale. Standardization became thenceforward his settled policy, and the ‘assembly line’ was devised; but in this, as in all else, his ruling notion was service to the ordinary man.

In 1915 Ford was able to turn his attention to his first love, the farm tractor. The European war seemed to him to impose a delay in placing it on the market: but victory depended upon British agriculture making good the food shortage which the German submarines were causing, and Ford sent his Fordson tractor to the rescue. He also rendered notable service by fulfilling his undertaking to build Eagle submarine chasers by the same methods he employed in regard to his cars. From war, however, he refused to profit. At this period indeed the magician in production stood in strange contrast to the unrealistic pacifist who as leader of a group of cranks went in the Peace Ship to Scandinavia in order to have the ‘boys out of the trenches by Christmas, never to return’. It was the foolishness of a child, but the intention was entirely sincere. Ford had his difficulties and in the slump of 1920 faced a serious financial situation: but he found his own way out and his vast undertaking went on from strength to strength. In 1924 its annual production reached the towering peak of 2,000,000 cars, trucks, and tractors. His achievements were, moreover, by no means in the material sphere alone. Of humble origin himself he had a deep feeling for his employees, and worked out rough and ready principles in regard to labour which he consistently applied. One was to pay the highest possible wages, and in this he was a true reformer; another to accept applicants for work without questions or references. Ex-prisoners were welcomed: but once a would-be employee was accepted he came under a rigid discipline which followed him even into his home. For years Ford would have nothing to do with unions. His passion for the perfect organization of production led him indeed into an effort to mechanize the human material he employed. It was, however, a deterrent to many independent-minded Americans and numbers of his workers were drawn from recent emigrants to the United States.

In 1918 Ford, who was a supporter of President Wilson, had run unsuccessfully for the Senate and in 1923 there was some talk – it caused alarm among the professional politicians – that he would run for the Presidency, and a movement to support him was started; but before long he himself announced his refusal to stand against Mr Coolidge. In the next year his acquisition of the Dagenham site in addition to his Trafford Park and Cork works was announced. It was part of a post-war policy of expansion, and between 1931 and 1946 over 1,000,000 vehicles were manufactured at the Dagenham factory alone. He then went into civil aviation, opened his company’s private air service, and soon afterwards his all-metal monoplanes were on sale. It was the beginning of great developments. At this period the Press published many stories of his fabulous wealth, and his spectacular successes and good treatment of his workers were widely discussed, and Ford himself wrote three books concerning his own life’s work and ideals – My Life and Work, Today and Tomorrow, and Moving Forward. In 1927 ‘Model T’ was superseded and over 350,000 advance orders were received for his new car. In April, 1931, his 20,000,000th car came off the assembly line, but in that year also the company, suffering like all others from the depression, lost £10,000,000.

The years immediately before the 1939–45 war saw a revival in the Ford fortunes and fresh expansions of plant, and as the war developed his company did excellent work; but the production of his great plant at Willow Run scarcely lived up to his earlier estimates of his own capacity as a producer. In 1943 Ford lost his only child and close associate, Edsel Bryant Ford, who for many years had played a leading part in all his undertakings, and, although nearly 80, himself resumed the presidency of his company. He resigned, for the second time, in 1945, and on his nomination his grandson, Henry Ford ii, was elected in his place. Henry Ford ii, who was born in September, 1917, had been released from the United States Navy in 1943 to direct war production at the Ford Motor Company, of which he was appointed executive vice-president in 1944.

Mahatma Gandhi

Apostle of independence

30 January 1948

Mr Gandhi, who was assassinated in Delhi yesterday afternoon, was the most influential figure India has produced for generations. He set out to promote national consciousness, and to defend the ancient Indian ideals of poverty and simplicity against the inroads of modern industrialism, though this part of his teaching was seldom heard in his later years. He judged all activities, whether of the State or of the individual, by their conformity to the doctrine of non-violence, which he held to be the panacea of all human ills, political, social, and economic. His day of triumph when British authority was voluntarily withdrawn was turned to profound sorrow, for communal strife and bloodshed, instead of ending as he had confidently hoped, were greatly intensified, and the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan were brought to the verge of war. To efforts to replace this fratricidal strife by Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh harmony and good will he devoted the last months of his long life.

In all parts of the world many regarded the ‘Mahatma’ (‘great soul’) as both a great moral teacher and a great Indian patriot. Others held him to be the victim of a naive self-delusion which blinded him to the race-hatred, disorder, and bloodshed which his ‘non-violent’ campaigns against British authority invariably provoked. But few critics have questioned the sincerity of his repudiation of force. A whole-hearted pacifist, he believed he had a mission not to India only but to all the world. To his own co-religionists he was certainly a ‘saint’. His increasing asceticism, finally marked by a complete indifference to the comforts of life (though these were showered upon him by wealthy supporters), won him a reverence that bordered upon adoration; the popular mind long credited him with powers little short of miraculous; his gospel of the liberation of India from British rule early won the enthusiastic support of most of the younger school of Hindu politicians, and did much to wean them from the cult of anarchy; his defence of Hindu faith and culture against western ‘materialism’ gave him the adhesion of multitudes of the orthodox.

A convinced Hindu, but widely read in other faiths and a great admirer of the Christian ideal, he was a powerful advocate of social reform. The poverty of the masses and his desire for India to return to the simplicities of the past led him to proclaim the need for the people, rich and poor alike, to spin by hand their own cotton thread and to weave and wear their own hand-made cotton cloth. Wherever he went his charka (spinning wheel) went with him, and as he talked to those who sought him daily he spun his cloth.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, the capital of a small State in Kathiawar, Western India, where his father, though belonging only to the socially obscure Bania (moneylending) section of Hindus, was the Dewan. He was married when only 13 to a child of the same age, but from 1906 was a Brahmacharya – that is, a celibate within the marriage state for the purpose of realizing God. In early life he admired Western ways, and in this period he read law at the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar. He was meticulous in wearing the top hat and frock coat of the ‘town kit’ of the period. Some years later on, after conviction in India, he was disbarred. All his life he remained a strict vegetarian and total abstainer. In 1893 he went from Bombay to South Africa in connection with an Indian legal case of some complexity, and remained to oppose discriminatory legislation against Indians, and his stay lasted for 21 years. Gandhi was admitted an advocate of the Supreme Court. When the South African war broke out he organized an Indian Ambulance Corps, 1,000 strong, which often worked under heavy fire. Again, in 1906, on the outbreak of the Zulu rebellion, he formed a stretcher-bearer corps.

After the passage of an Act in 1913 restricting Indian migration between the different Provinces of the Union, some 3,000 Indians with Gandhi at their head, crossed the border from Natal into the Transvaal in order to court arrest. Many, including the leader, his wife, and one of his sons, were imprisoned. In 1914 Gandhi returned to India by way of London, and he landed here a few days before the outbreak of the 1914–18 War. He was instrumental in organizing from among the Indian students a volunteer ambulance corps, which rendered good service. In Western India he rapidly became the champion of all whom he regarded as weak and oppressed, and was associated with the whirlwind movement for Home Rule resulting from the activities of Annie Besant, but at the War Conference convened by the Viceroy at Delhi in the spring of 1918 he supported ‘with all his heart’ a resolution of support of the war effort.

In 1919, in pursuance of what he called satyagraha, or ‘truth-seeking’, he issued a pledge of refusal to obey the Rowlatt Acts, ‘and such other laws as the committee to be hereafter appointed may think fit’. There followed the serious disturbances of April, 1919, both at Ahmedabad, Gandhi’s home, and in the Punjab, notably at Amritsar. The loss of life thus caused led Gandhi to admit that he had made a blunder of ‘Himalayan’ dimensions. But from this time began his unquestioned mastery over the Congress Party organization. To him that party was India; and as its spokesman he was India’s chosen mouthpiece.

In the spring of 1920 Gandhi considered that India was spiritually prepared to undertake a further campaign of passive resistance without risk of lapse into violence. He started a movement of ‘non-violent non-cooperation’, declaring it would be maintained until the claims of the Khilafat movement – started by Indian Muslims to obtain alleviation of the harsh peace terms imposed on Turkey after the 1914–18 war – were conceded, and until public servants alleged to be guilty of ‘martial law excesses’ in the Punjab were adequately punished. He promised swaraj, meaning complete self-government without the aid of the British, within a year. On paper at least he collected within a few months a crore of rupees (£750,000) for swaraj. Gandhi’s open letter to the Viceroy (the first Lord Reading) dated February 9, 1922, giving him seven days in which to announce a change of policy, had scarcely been dispatched when at Chauri-Chaura, in the Gorakhpur district, United Provinces, a number of constables were attacked in their thana and burnt to death. He called a halt to the civil disobedience movement and imposed upon himself a five days’ fast. On March 10, 1922, he was arrested, and was later tried for conspiracy. Gandhi pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years’ simple imprisonment, but was released in January, 1924, after an operation in gaol for appendicitis.

Early in 1929 Gandhi shared responsibility for a resolution of conditional acceptance of the proposed Round Table Conference passed at a meeting of political leaders. But on March 12, 1930, Gandhi, with 80 volunteers, began a march of 200 miles on foot from his ashram, near Ahmedabad, to Dandi, a village on the sea coast in the Surat district, for the purpose of collecting salt, and thereby defying the law. On May 5 he was arrested and interned at Yeravda Gaol, near Poona, under a Bombay Regulation of 1827. The economic effects of the second era of civil disobedience were much more serious than those of the first, owing in large measure to the intensity of the boycott.

The Round Table Conference met in London in the autumn of 1930. Lord Irwin (now Lord Halifax) released the Congress leaders to facilitate discussions and had a number of interviews with Gandhi. These led in March, 1931, to the signature of the famous Irwin-Gandhi Pact.

Gandhi came to London in the late summer as the sole delegate of the Congress at the Round Table Conference. The expectation formed in many quarters here of seeing a man of commanding gifts was not fulfilled. He had no mastery of detail: constitutional problems did not interest him. He was no orator; his speeches were made seated and delivered slowly in low, level tones, which did not vary whatever his theme might be. His interventions in discussion were mainly propagandist, and often had little real connection with the matter in hand. He made no real constructive contribution to the work of the Conference. Meantime the pact was breaking down, and on Gandhi’s return to Bombay a renewed campaign of civil disobedience was initiated by the Congress under his chairmanship. Once more he was arrested, on January 4, 1932, and detained in Yeravda Gaol.

When the British Government’s communal award was published he intimated to the Prime Minister (Mr Ramsay MacDonald) that he would starve himself to death unless the part of the award giving separate seats to the depressed classes (which in his view cut them off from the Hindu community) were withdrawn or suspended. The fast began on September 20, 1932, but some political leaders of the two communities negotiated a compromise, approved by the Mahatma and accepted by Government. Gandhi accordingly broke his fast on the seventh day. There was great diversity of opinion, in Hindu ranks particularly, on Gandhi’s advocacy of legislation to secure admission of the depressed classes to the temples of higher caste folk. At the end of April, 1933, he announced his intention in this connection to fast for 21 days, and when the ordeal began on May 8 he was unconditionally released. Soon after Gandhi arranged to lead another civil disobedience ‘march’. On the eve of the march, July 31, he was arrested, and a few days later was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.