Home, James!

NZ Truth, Issue 1178, 28 June 1928, Page 6

Home, James!

•THOSE who waited on the wharf at 1 Auckland the other day for their friends to come ashore from the R.M.S. Niagara, may have asked who was the square-shouldered man with the white hair, cold, fixed eye and rather Slav type of features above an unusually high starched collar. He was, as a matter of fact, none other than the one and only Sir James Gunson, who, m the not so distant past, was the big noise m Auckland's municipal affairs. The man who acquired the trams for an ungrateful city, who designed the wondrous entrance- way to Parnell Park and— to omit many other feats of municipal daring — laid waste that present eyesore of the Queen City, the Civic Square, now referred to frequently as Gunson's Cemetery. It is said by the well-informed that the one and only Sir Jamea will not stand for an Auckland constituency; that he has relinquished any political ambitions and will content himself with his own private activities. But there are those who, believing they have some faculties of perception, i hold that this former autocrat, this mayoral master of hounds (so to speak) has returned at a most opportune time — that although he may not have the sublime honor of warming the upholstery of the city throne as of yore, he will, at any rate, be a power of no mean calibre m the city's affairs. Neither Is it difficult to conceive that a man of such forceful personality as Sir James, and one so deeply versed m all the ramifications of matters municipal, will— at the present stage of allround muddlement — be hailed as a saviour, guide, comforter and advisor by the "old gang," whose leaderless record of maladministration during the last eighteen months has left them with but the bare bones of any public confidence. I