LORD NUFFIELD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 October 1939, Page 7

LORD NUFFIELD

STILL “BILL” MORRIS AT HEART. REASONS ACTUATING GIFTS. Nothing could be further from the truth than to picture Viscount Nuffield as a hardened, abrupt and aloof industrialist, a man who is trailed across the world by a staff of secretaries and servants, publicity agents, and red tape writes a correspondent in the “Sydney Morning Herald.” At heart, and in his actions, he is still "Bill ’ Morris, the mechanic, who began his career mak ■ ing bicycles in a back yard shed near Oxford 45 years ago. Nor is giving away money merely a matter of giving it away. Viscount Nuffield’s gifts to hospitals, to universities, to the relief of suffering amohg crippled children and people in distressed areas and gifts for the use of his country as it saw fit, are nearing the £11,000.000 mark, and not one penny has left his hands with • out serious and prolonged thought on his part. “There is far too much suffering in this world,” he once told me. when discussing the purpose behind his . gifts. “There are far too many people in hospitals who should not be there. I cannot imagine any sight more cruel, more depressing, than that of a crippled

child. If it is possible to cure crippled children—and it is, in thousands of cases —then it is a crime if they do not have the opportunity of receiving the kind of treatment that will make them better. Crippled children will always have the first call on my money.” Viscount Nuffield is 61 years old, and except for his thick crop of polish steel grey hair, which he brushes straight back from his forehead, giving his head a streamlined effect, he might well pass for a man 15 years younger. One of his friends once remarked that he has the look of speed .about him, and that is very true. His mental speed, at all events, penetrates deeper than the look. He is lean and lantern-jawed, always keen, always alert. I have never seen him relax. He invariably sits forward in a chair; gripping the arms with his strong, lean fingers, and generally tapping one foot when he is not puffing at a cigarette. He gives one the impression that he is thinking life so short and that there is so much realwork to be done.

He has an almost uncanny solicitude for the feelings and thoughts of other people, particularly people in distress. One day a woman was injured slightly while playing sport on deck during a previous voyage to Australia. Viscount' Nuffield left the game he was playing and sat with her for some time watching the others. She suggested that he might like to resume his game, but he refused. This story was told by a fel-low-passenger, but later, Lord Nuffield, referring to the world and people generally, observed: “Not enough consideration is given in this world to the mental and physical misfortunes of other people.” Lord Nuffield does not believe that the day when a humble motor mechanic, for example, might become a leading industrialist has gone. “Opportunities are always there for the lad who will grasp them,” he told me on one occasion. “In my own case. I owe my success to sheer hard work. I don’t think anyone would get anywhere without hard work. But boys should begin their careers early. I believe it is a mistake for a boy to spend his life until he is twenty at school and then go out into the world to gain practical experience. He should have had some practical experience long before then. He has also got to make up his mind what he wants to do early. And don't forget that there are just as many opportunities today as there were when I was a boy.” When one meets Viscount Nuffield and talks with him. one ceases, almost to think of him as the great manufacturer, but as the man whose guiding interest is the welfare of humanity. “In my life there has been no spectacle more thrilling than that of a once crippled child playing normally with healthy children.” And in the laboratories in all parts of the Empire, equipped as the result of Lord Nuffield’s gifts, doctors and scientists are engaged in research work with one object in view—to relieve human suffering. The attainment of that object is Lord Nuffield’s greatest wish.