OUR NEW GOVERNORGENERAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 40034, 3 December 1929, Page 3

OUR NEW GOVERNORGENERAL.

PEN PICTURE OF LORD BLEDISLOE. AN ENTHUSIASTIC 1 FARMER. Loudon, November 30. Lord Bledisloe is a fine type of English country gentleman —medium height, athletic build, greyhaired and moustached. lie is an enthusiastic argil cult urist and is the largest practical farmer with extensive estates in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. He falrms these estates pn the most modern principles, securing the highest wheat averages. He is an expert in the treatment of grasslands, and the improvement in the breed of live-stoefk, and is a strong supporter of the principle of small holding’s worked by a farmer family as opposed to the tenant system. He advocates co-operation by farmers ■not merely in tbe sale of produce but also in the purchase of raw materials, transportation and the use of Credit facilities. He considers that farmers should organise for tbe control of the wholesale markets and regulate the sale 'of dieir product*. Lord Bledisloe is particularly interested in New Zealand’s dairy produce market system, and keenly anticipates! observing the scheme in actual operation in New Zealand. He had intended to lead the farmers’ delegation which will shortly visit Australia and New Zealand. He expects to embark for New Zealand in, January.

lif an article published in the “Spectator,” Loird Bledisloe said [ho creation of small family farms had become an urgent need for the output of home-grown food and tbe production of efficient men and women, well equipped for the task of peopling the overseas Empire. “It is indeed the human products of the peasant proprietary system, such as exists in Scandinavia, which has provided Australia, Canada and New Zealand with a far more experienced and more confident type of settler than Britain is able to do, either from the urban unemployed or from the illequipped denizens of the'devitalised countryside operating helplessly under the worn-out territorial, economic system.”

Lord Bledisloe, speaking to-night at a dinner of the Gloucester Institute of Bankers, said lie was rather .pro-occupied because three days''ago the King, on the recommendation of tbe Government of one of the foremost Dominions, had asked him to undertake the Governor-Generalship of New Zealand. It was with the deepest regret he would have to absent himself from the dear old country for 'five years. He felt most diffident, but would try to justify His Majesty’s selection, and would do the best in bis power as an Englishman and a Gloucestershire man. The only discordant note in Lord Bledisloe’s appointment was struck by the “Daily Herald,” which asks why tbe Government should appoint a Tory. “It might well have followed the precedent of Tasmania, where Sir. James O’Grady had acquitted himself with distinction.”