Pearl

A century ago the hamlet of Birkenhead boasted some 50 inhabitants, rustics who scratched their polls in wonder at the great steamers plying to Liverpool, just across the River Mersey. Last week scholars of the Birkenhead School, all conscious that their potent industrial city now numbers over 100,000 souls, welcomed a sleek gentleman who once conned his three R's at Birkenhead School under the name of Freddy Smith. "My advice to you . . ." said the sleek gentleman while his auditors squirmed appreciatively, "My advice to you is to meet success, when it comes to you, like a gentleman, and to meet disaster like a man."

Frederick Edwin ("Galloper") Smith, 54, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain (1919-22), First Baron Birkenhead (1919), First Earl of Birkenhead (1922), has met success as often as any man in England (TIME, May 3). There are those who, reflecting on his delight in a cold bottle and a warm companion, would scarcely call his wooing of success quite "gentlemanly." But the present Secretary of State for India, brilliant, resourceful, has at least no false pride.

He might have shown a preference in the naming of his earldom for some title as hoar in honor as the first half of that possessed by nouveau Lord Oxford and Asquith. Instead, little Freddy Smith, grown up into one of England's greatest barrister-statesmen proclaimed his origin by choosing the name of a city scarcely older than himself.

Roundly cheered by the striplings of Birkenhead School last year he dropped one last pearl of oracular wisdom: "While you are young, cultivate the habit of industry. I regret that I never did so."