OBITUARY.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 August 1922, Page 5

OBITUARY.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE. IN HIS FIFTY-EIGHTH YEAR. A GREAT JOURNALIST. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—-Copyright. Received Aug. 15, 1 a.m. London, August 14. Lord Northcliffe is dead. Before his death prayers were offered in the London dioceses for Lord Northcliife, including St. Paul’s and Westminster Aobey. Cable Assn. Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, who in 1904 received the honor of baronetcy, and a year later was raised to the peerage, became the first Viscount Northcliffe in 1917. He was born at Chapelizpd, County Dublin, in July, 1865, and is probably best known as •being the founder of the London Daily Mail, the chief proprietor of the London Times, and other newspapers. He promoted an interest in airmanship in 1906, a science then only emerging from comparative infancy, by offering £lO,OOO for a flight from London to Manchester, and £lOOO for crossing the Channel by aeroplane. Possessed of great business ability and organising power. Lord Northcliffe developed a considerable area in Newfoundland for the production of paper. It was, however, during the war that his exceptional gifts were 'brought to light, and it was largely owing to his Press campaign that Mr. Asquith had to retire and make way for Mr. Lloyd George. His greatest service, however, in that trying period was as director of propaganda in enemy countries, the effect of which had a material influence in hastening the close of hostilities.

Of Lord Northcliffe, Mr. E. T. Raymond wrote in his “Uncensored Celebrities”: “Lord Northcliffe, in his proper business, has the gift of intuitive perception in extraordinary, measure. He possesses a supreme instinct for the right thing in the sense of the expedient thing. He knows exactly what the public wants, or rather what the public would want if it knew how to make its wants known; also he knows what the common man will be saying the day after to-morrow, and says it in advance. In great things and small, he has always been a little ahead of his rivals. He aimed at ‘the man in the street,’ and hit him very hard in every issue of Answers. Answers wg.s Alfred Harmsworth’s campaign of Italy. As its conductor he reached the high-water mark of his genius. Great men in the making are always more wonderful than great men made. ‘“There is some significance in Lord Northcliffe’s choice of heroes—Dickens in letters, Napoleon in history. Dickens he admires for the sufeness with which he aimed at the heart of the masses, Napoleon for the way in which he controlled men and got things done. The truth is that he is himself a composite parody of the two men.

“To some who knew him best, it was rather surprising that he should have accepted, first, a baronetcy, and then a peerage, from Mr. Balfour. In the first ■place he somewhat diminished the independence which he had by this time, after some attempt to play the party game, adopted as his line; in the second he parted with a considerable source of moral strength. For in his young days he did stand for a kind of democratic reality. Holding himself aloof from society, refusing to be entangled in any set, busying himself solely in his wealth and newspaper influence, he might in a negative way have been of considerable service to the country in hi« part of independent critic.” It was only last year that Lord Northcliffe made a tour of the Empire and other countries, visiting Germany. Many Germans were surprised at his audacity and talked a great deal of boycotting him, yet he encountered not a single unpleasant incident, while he obtained much useful information which he published in a series of articles on “What I saw in Germany,” the conclusion he arrived at being that Germany is prospering remarkably, notwithstanding the war, and that she can pay—if she chooses. It is easily understood that such an outstanding genius in his particular sphere of influence should make both friends and enemies, but Lord Northcliffe was as full of courage as resource, and his death will leave a void in the ranks of leading men of the Empire that cannot be filled. He is survived by Lady Northcliffe, and there wejo nd children.