THE LATE LORD RHONDDA.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1918, Page 3

THE LATE LORD RHONDDA.

A REMARKABLE CHARACTEB. The late Lord Rhondda (Mr David Alfred Thomas) was described as "a business man first and a House of Commons afterwards." He was a believer in direct methods. As President of the Local Government Board, under the reconstructed Ministry of Mr Lloyd George, he raised that Department to a high pitch of efficiency by his energy and freedom from "departmentalism." The late Lord Rhondda, says a writer in "To-day," was intended for a painter, and his early propensities with brushes were deemed remarkable for one eo young. Finally he took up his father's; coal business which he expanded and rendered prodigiously lucrative. He had already gone through Cambridge and achieved distinctions like a seat in the Commons and the Presidency of various commercial chambers and trade federations. Yet these things do not Interest him, He was all for farming. He had at different times expended princely sums in finding out that tropical fruits will not flourish in Wales, and that the climate of London was unfavorable to the banana. Experience moderated the fury of his first agricultural j enthusiasm, but he was a romanticist (13 much as ever.

How much money Lord Rliondda has made out of coal is one of the subjects concerning which Socialist leaders occasionally manifest curiosity. He had a geniu 3 for talking coal land-owners into fijiiing contracts, although in the Commons he could not make a grand speech in Mr Balfour's manner. His aptitude for getting rich by revolutionising a great industry caused one Labor leader to term Lord Rhondda a demon in one respect, although an angel in another. "Lord Rhondda has a dual personality. He is a sort of industrial Jekyll and | Byde. He is both an industrial organ- ' iser and a capitalist, and the* functions [of the two are quite distinct. "How often," he was asked, "do you feel conceited?'' To which he replied: "Not 1 often." Lord Rhondda was on the Lusitania when she was torpedoed by a submarine. He is said to have expressed a considerable annoyance subsequently at the finding of Lord Melwey's court that "probably the disastrous attempts of the .frightened passengers to assist in the launching operations, added to the difficulties of the crew in lowering the boats" His own view wa9 that the passengers were all heroes. "I suppose, in deference to Socialist opinion," lie told a journalist, "I ought to except myself." Lord Rhondda had gone to Canada with full powers to negotiate with the Dominion Government, although what he achieved there is one of the secrets of the war. "How did you feel," he was asked by a reporter when he landed after the torpedoing, to which he replied: "Wet." Upon reaching home he was asked by a constituent if he had prayed during those awful moments after the torpedo struck, to which he replied: "I had already said my prayers before I had my breakfast." The statement was received with ridicule, at least in South Wales.

If farming were not so notoriously the recreation 'of Lord Rhondda, he would never have been Food Controller at all. Lord Rhondda surprised those who knew him best by his unexpected patience with the discontented, his diplomacy, upon occasion even his fluency. At the end of a weary round of interviews and deputations and experts he would plunge into a mass of statistics at home in a small room on the ground floor of his London residence. He had a passion for figures as well as for farming He worked out in his own somewhat crabbed hand the calculations upon which were based the rationing Bystem that went into effect in Great Britain. His main objects, as stated in the London Spectator, were to conserve supplies, to distribute them equally between rich and poor, and keep prices down. He worked through local food committees and arranged to extend his system to bread and meat. His scheme for feeding his countrymen went into full effect by the end of December, 1917.