The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1926. A MAN OF MOMENT.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1926. A MAN OF MOMENT.

Of the many notable men serving Britain at the present time of crisis, Sir Herbert Samuel is an outstanding personality. A gifted London correspondent has written of him some six • weeks ago: “Behind the tremendous ’ controversy that must rage around the Coal Commission’s report looms indistinctly but persistently, the demure and natty figure of Sir Herbert t Samuel. When Mr Stanley BahlI win selected him to preside over the commission’ deliberations, he displayed wisdom in choosing such an alert and level-headed chairman, and courage in nominating one whose known i opinions were so little prejudiced towards vested interests. But he did more than that. The Prime Minister touched the inscrutable mechanism of one of the mot perplexing careers in our contemporary annals. In the baffling adventure of public life there are few peronalities more impressively efficient, and hardly another fraught with bigger potentialities. After a successful debut in polities at Westminster, and a successful record of achievement as a Front Bench Minister, Sir Herbert’s illusive star banish- . cd him to Jorualem, where for some years he evinced all his established administrative genius in the ancient seat of the Roman Governor who launched upon humanity the superb tragedy of Christianity. Sir Herbert laboured enthusiastically but discreetly at the great task of securing a national habitation and a territorial patriotism for the people of his own gifted race. From that distinguished exile he returned, right into the fiercest limelight of the political hurly-burly, to command the Holienzollern Redoubt of the coal inquiry. He held that awkward and dangerous salient, coolly, boldly, diplomatically, and with conscientious efficiency. He must have realised that upon the outcome of the work of himself and his colleagues, depended sufficiently transcendent issues. Between the occurrence or the avoidance of a disastrous coal strike, paralysing our national industries at a moment of crucial stress, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that there lay all the difference between revolutionary upheaval and recaptured national properity and prestige. Sir Herbert iaeed the ordeal without disturbing either his serene self-confidence or his irreproachable sartorial correctness. The coal -report is now settled History. Around it will hammer the barrage of the most strenuous controversy that our political life has known for a decade perhaps. And its main author and controling mind has for the moment relapsed into dim reti- ' cenee in the background of affairs. ‘ But it seems hardly improbable lie can remain there. Eagles are not mewed in garden suburbs. And the I Herbert Samuels of life are not to be 1 side-tracked into obscurity in an epoch of whriling politics. The wise man whom Mr Baldwin called out of the 'East is not long going to remain inactive in the West. He is certain to return to the activity of the big arena < of affairs, and play out his destined 1 hand with the gods who shape the rough-hewn careers of men.” This I

prophetic utterance came true last week when Sir Herbert helped to shape the course towards an industrial settlement. He has been described as “the apostle of efficiency,” and it is conceivable that Mr Stanley Baldwin has had valuable help and support in deigning the basis for the coal settlement on something like economic lines. Sir Herbert Samuel is too young a man to fade out of the political picture of Great Britain, and his work so well done will keep him to the fore. He has the facility for performing bis tasks, leaving nothing half-done, and on that account the glory reflected upon him in the settlement of the coal crisis will mark him out as a man of the times, worthy to he trusted and well litted to do greater tilings still in the way of accomplishment for the national good.