MR G. S. BRIDGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 7913, 21 September 1904, Page 4

MR G. S. BRIDGE.

It is difficult to explain in cold print the extent of the loss to education the sad news about the illness of the Chairman of the Wanganui Education Board means to this district. For it is only of late years that the public has begun to realise the rugged honesty, the unswerving uprightness and the exceptional ability of the man who has for years J filled the title role of educational ad-

ministrator for the large district comprised within the limits of the Wanganui Education district. Those who have been privileged to be associated with him in his public work have all recognised the valuable qualifications he possesses for the work he has carried on so. successfully—for there has been nothing superficial about Mr Bridge, he has never been satisfied unless he has got to the bottom of tilings, and once he has been convinced of the justness of the view he has taken, no consideration would influence him to the contrary. But what has endeared him to those who have worked with him in public life has been the good-natured manner with which he has accepted defeat even on much-cherished proposals, and the loyal way he has worked to perfect schemes which the majority of those on the Board have carried when he sided with the minority. Of his unfailing industry, his marvellous capacity for marshalling facts and figures, his unswerving loyalty to the best traditions of public life and his selfsacrifice in devoting so much of his time to public affairs,.we cannot speak too highly, but one little matter will give as good an indication as volumes of eulogy, He returned to Wanganui ten days ago after a consultation with medical men, which plainly told him' that the one chance of finding out whether his case was hopeless was an inimediate operation, and he set his affairs in order preliminary to the great test. Even then his first thought, was his public work, and he carefully prepared everything for the ensuing Board meeting, went minutely, through tlie teachers 7 staffing .work, prepared motions on matters of importance, and went to meet his fate with a stoicism worthy of such a man. For he had lived his life nobly and the only regrets must be those of the public at the laying aside of one of those stren. uous nien who are the salt of real life.