A VETERAN IN POLITICS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 86, 18 April 1913, Page 4

A VETERAN IN POLITICS

The Australian Commonwealth’s High Commissioner, Sir George Reid, has just celebrated the completion of his sixty-eighth year. The Morning Post, congratulating Sir George, expresses the view that few men have done more than he for the welding together of the British Empire, and considers that when the history of the latter part of the nineteenth century comes to be written full credit will be done to him for the work he has accomplished towards, the unification of Australians self-governing •dominions, whereby; they have been converted into one State that is destined 1 to bepome ever a mightier and mightier Offshoot of the i Motherland, But Sir George Reid was not the originator of the Commonwealth idea. The conception, as he frankly admits, was' due to the fertile brain of that wonderful man, Sir Henry . Parkes, who, having landed in Australia a poor working man, with only sixpence in his pocket, attained to the highest position open to a citizen of the country in his owiiday. But at the time Sir George Reid, then Mr Reid, camt into office as Premier of New South Wales, which was in 1891,, the movement in favour of federation had been practically ' shelved for some years, and it is to his energy, persistence, and brilliant advocacy that it again emerged into the region of practical politics, and was brought to a triumphant issue. Sir George is a native of Ayrshire, Scotland, and when quite a child landed in 1 ictoria just at the beginning of the gold discoveries. He entered the New South Wales civil service as a junior clerk, and very soon made his name in active politics. On the subject ol Australia and the opportunities it offers of advancement to men in all walks of life, Sir George is especially emphatic. “When you consider,” he says, “that even now that vast continent has a population of no more than four and a half million people, you w ill see that there must be immense chances for a man there. It is a country in which broad avenues to national wealth have so far been scarcely touched, and they offer splendid opportunities to get on in the world, particularly in these days when the settler no longer depends on his axe or his rifle, .but on the mechanical appliances of modern civilisation.