GEDDES, THE MAN.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 May 1922, Page 4

GEDDES, THE MAN.

(Bv One who has worked under him.)

They sav that no man is a hero to Iris valet, and, a. suppose Hint few Minister)* of. tin* Crown aie hciocs to their private secretaries. Your Minister, uiulevcr liis political complexion, has his horns of intense anxiety, of grave aniioyiinee. , of impatience and irritability. dm* perhaps to some domestic jar. or a touch j of liver. Sir Erie Gcddes, a general of j rile Army, an admiral of the Navy, a * Minister of tile (Town—all these at 40 years of age—is merely a name to the man in the street, albeit a respected name and one that will long lie remembered. What is lie like at close quarters? I found myself immensely interested when the chance came to find out. He had sent for me to be of wind service T could in a small capacity ; that brouglpt me into direct personal j relation with, him for a lew months, and the first thing to impress me was lii,s geniality. Rumour had it that he was a bully and. rumour lied. Hard he might be and, unyielding, impetuous beyond a doubt, but always courteous lin’d often smiling. i

Hy was a great worker, early at his office, and. ho laboured at a great pac«, g' lieiaily behind a big eigai, ollcu ill bis shirt sleeves.

L chanced once to see a very truculent Labour leader going in -t*» see S r Eric in the heat of an industrial crisis. ’ The outlook was very bad, the extremist tail, was wagging the Labour dog, fliere j was grave danger of a disastrous (lev*lopment to which I need not refer ex- | Illicitly, and this representative of the extremists stiode into the sanctum as ; though lie bad purchased the fee simple * of the whole building, and had brought j an ejectment order with him. | I saw him half an hour later. Even li is moustache seined limp; lie had been to C-mossa and learned to lower bis proud look. In his sanctum Mir Erie sat at the big

desk in the centre of the room: he look, ed slightly Hushed. "I think.” he said, after giving me some instructions, "that the situation is easier.” He might have added that lie had saved it. (In another occasion lie sent for me at the end of a long conference with the representative of certain railway interests. For once lie looked tired, and I remarked it.

“I've been at it hammer and tongs,’ lie said, “and the upshot is over a million pounds saved for the country.”

His keen eye laid detected a Ihuv in an important item in the claim of the railway companies; lie had done the

Behind him were the experts of his own cheesing Sir I Inrdman l.ever. Sir I-'rnnr-is Diinin’ll, Sir (ioorge liohnrrel, iiinl others. The public screamed boeausc he paid big salaries to big men, hot in that moiiiine he liutl probably saved the whole oust of his Ministry. A sure test of a man's calibre is the quality of the service he can win. J think - indeed I know that all were proud to give him the lies! they had to oll'er. There was no forlorn hope he could not have led. Beneath the forceful and often menacing exterior there were the qualities that marked the statesman and the administrator and the greater the trouble, the more alarming the situation, the more freely could he draw upon those reserves of power. Whitehall may have exhausted the scope of his ambitions; it could not exhaust the reserves of his capacity. A very great personality has passed from our public life.