BUSINESS TO WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1920, Page 6

BUSINESS TO WAR.

GENERAL SIR JOHN MONASH. A REMARKABLE CAREER. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Melbourne, Jan. 13. ■ The Jewish community is presenting General Sir John Monash with £IO,OOO in recognition of his services. General Monash has announced that he will hand the gift to the Melbourne University.

Mr. F. M. Cutlack (war correspondent), writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, said of General Monash, who reached Melbourne a few days ago. He is a clear-headed, successful business man, developed into an accomplished military leader. The war brought out many business men ,in similar fashion, but there is no better example of them than Sir John Monash. He has said mam - times that Carrying on a modern war is like nothing so much as directing a big industrial concern. It demands the same large oversight, the same ruthless removal of inefficiencies, the same capacity for prompt decision,. Sir John would probably also declare that it requires the same close individual control by the head of the firm. Yet his subordinate commanders always bore willing tribute to his .loyalty to the man on the spot, and the free rein he always gave to tried individual judgment and initiative.

Nobody in France ever saw General Monash at play, and rarely at leisure. Officers of his headquarters staff who set out to work as long a day as the G.C.O. found themselves' committed to the most continuous hard work they had ever done in their lives. General Monash always knew every detail of what was going on within his command. In his office he was always more like a newspaper editor, or the chief of a large engineering construction staff, or the director of a great corporation- than an army leader. • He saw everybody; he forgot nothing. He left nothing to chance which industry and foresight could make certain. He made no plan? until he had exhausted the ideas of all staff and subordinate commanding officers; then he would suggest a scheme which embraced the good points of all. Subordinate commanders, while carrying out schemes which the G.O.C. would watch to the closest detail, usually believed at the same time that the plans were to a great extent their o/wn. That was Sir John's qudlity of leadership. He always looked at the map of. his position in the line from the enemy's side of it. His sonnd sense, foresight, calculating industry, learning, an'd keen knowledge of men would have made him a sound and successful general in either the British or the German armies. He snfo!<ed great quantities of tobacco, which he himself cut from the plug. It might be said of him that he had trained himself to be fit to do anything in life. He was a leading civil engineer. He graduated at Melbourne in engineering, arts and law. More than once he put medical officers in his divisional staff through what they admitted to he severe and technical examinations in their own profession. He was a ; voracious reader. He took up volunteer soldiering nearly twenty years : before the war as part of his active and relentless study of life and men. He speaks French and German fluently. And on top of these attainments Sir John has about him an unfailing magnetism. It ; is due to nothing physically prepossessing—he is neither tall nor" athletic noi; well-proportioned; rather, it is the | shrewdness, warm heart, and quick I sense of Humor of the man.