"A Citizen of the Pacific."

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18412, 19 June 1925, Page 8

"A Citizen of the Pacific."

Nothing is so interesting in our last American mail as the tribute of the New York "Times" to Mr Massey. It is a proof both of the alertness of the "Times" and of the fame of our late Prime Minister that tho public of New York "were reading an admirable editorial estimate of him under tho above heading twenty-four hours after the cabled news of his death reached tho Northern Hemisphere. The "Times" began by saying that "William Ferguson Massey was an " Ulsterman by birth, a New Zealander " by adoption, and one of the statesmen ".of the new Pacific by force of "character." It is impressed by the fact that although Mr Massey never lost interest in the land of his birth and in the affairs of Europe, "his " principal thought -was of tho British "Empire, and, in particular, of its " relations to the -world." New Zealand and Australia, it says, have been forced by their geographical location to think internationally, and it attributes "the "vigour with which Mr Massey pro- " tested against the abandonment of " the Singapore project in the Spring "of 1924" to the fact that we have been compelled in our isolation to give special attention to the "British Empire's policies in the Far East." It is an extraordinary fact'that a New York journal should find Mr Massey's love of the Empire at once so admirable and so interesting. It devotes several inches of space to that before it turns to his frequent and emphatic references to the bonds of common interest between the United States and the British Dominions in the Pacific. On this matter it remarks with much justice and truth that Mr Massey " not "only felt that the Australians and " the New Zealanders had been affected "by the new frontier, just as had the "Americans, and that the fact that "kindred racial stocks facing like ." social problems had made the outlook " of tho three peoples much the same, " but he was firmly persuaded that in "matters international they viewed " the Pacific eye to eye." Tho " Times " insists also that the 1 Dominions owed it largely to Mr Massey that they were represented at the Washington Conference—a tribute that will be particularly pleasing to those who remember how much difficulty there was about Dominion representation, and that one Dominion at least shut itself out. And wo are sure that all our readers will bo pleased with the concluding paragraph—even with" the last sentence, which, though it seems at first a little loose, expresses a profound truth and contains high praise: " It is interesting " to note that Mr Massey was the last "of tho war Premiers. Hughes in " Australia and Smuts in South Africa "fell long before he died. Elsewhere " the civilian leaders of the war one by "one had been replaced.. But such " was Mr Massey's hold on his own "people that only death displaced "him. It is a curious paradox that "in a country noted for its excess of "liberalism a man who by nature was "so staunch a conservative long held "power."