SIR BENJAMIN FULLER.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 June 1921, Page 10

SIR BENJAMIN FULLER.

A NEW ZEALAND TRIBUTE. The June number of the organ of the New Zealand Educational Institute, National Education, contains an appreciative article upon Mr. Ben. J. Fuller’s recent gift to education, which has no doubt been the main reason for the knighthood conferred upon him among the King’s birthday honors. After describing the character of the trust of which his Excellency the Governor of New South Wales (Sir Walter Davidson) is president, to administer a fund given by Mr. Fuller to provide scholarships for children, the writer National Education says:—'Mr. Benjamin John Fuller is well known throughout Australia by reason of the big theatrical enterprises which he directs, involving a capital of over a million pounds; but he had not come before the public as a patron of education until a few months ago, when the announcement that a young student who had been chosen in Sydney as a Rhodes scholar was unable to go to Oxford because the monetary allowance was insufficient to meet pres-ent-day expenses, drew from him an immediate and Unconditional gift of .tTOOO. which removed all obstacles. Mr. Fuller intends a year or two hence to relinquish his extensive theatrical interests and devote the rest of nis life entirely to the promotion of education. It was the plight of the Rhodes scholar and the letters that he afterwards received from men and women interested in education that induced him to ’show his hand’ a little sooner than he otherwise would have done. Mr, Fuller referred incidentally to the recent announcment of Sir Langdon Bonython’s gift of £40,000 for the erection of a great hall for the Adelaide University, •That’s a splendid example, isn’t it?’ he asked, and, with a csaracteristifc wave of the arms, added: ‘I intend to make that as small in comparison with what I will do for education as .what 1 have already done is small compared with it. I have been fortunate. I have the faculty for making money. But money means nothing. It is what you do with it that matters, and I am going to throw my whole heart and soul and energy, as well as money, into furthering education all I can. It is a tremendous question., and if I can help to scratch the ground of it I shall feel that I have done something for my fellows/

‘’Much of Mr. Fuller’s entl/asiasm for education has its root in his own early strivings after knowledge. Taken from a London board school at eleven years of age, with precious little save his own natural gifts to aid him in his uphjll light—he ‘has been a juvenile entertainer, bill-poster, stage Hand, advance agent, actor, house manager, musician—everything, in fact, connected with a theatre except a circus-player—his' path to learning was strewn, with more thorns than roses. ‘But reading and travel are great educators,’ he ‘arid I owe most that I have to them. I should like to see every man who goes into Parliament travel the world for at least a year, even were it at the State’s expense.’ ”