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Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 342, 1 October 1932, Page 2

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AMERICAN IMPRESSION OF JOSEPH GORDON COATES. "Mr. Joseph Gordon Coates, leader of the New Zealand debgation to the Ottawa Conference, is, like Mi'. Massey, the Prime Minister he succeeded, a farmer and a farmers' man. He is tall and of athletic figure, and inspires one with a sense of physical fitness and vitality," says the Christian Science Monitoi". "His frank, friendly and hreezy manner is in lceeping with this impression. He was horn in North Auckland in 1878 of a pioneering family, and educated at a country primary sehool. After obtaining experience of public lif s in the local County Council and farmers' organisations, he entered Parliament in 1911 and ever since has represented his home electorate. He served in th Great War in Franoe, rose to the rank of major, and was awarded the Military Cross. "In 1919, the year that he returned to New Zealand, he was raised to Cabinet rank and made a name by the energy he brought to the direction of puhlic works and railways. He in- , stituted important reforms in the construction and management of the State railways, and pushed on a na- j tional policy of hydro-electrical developanent. "In 1925 he becanie Prime Minister and attended the Imperial Conference in 1926. His party was defeated at the eleetions in 1928, and he was in the Gpposition until he joined Mr. G. W. Forbes in the United-Reform Coalition Ministry formed in 1931, in which he took over the direction of unemployment relief. "Mr. Coates is a man of action rather than a man of ideas. No one, indeed, would call him an intellectual. His school has been the world of pioneering society. It has been said of liim that he is not essentially a politician, but an administrator, who is more interested in things than in men."