"AROUSED THE PEOPLE"

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 21, 4 December 1936, Page 6

"AROUSED THE PEOPLE"

"(THERE has always ‘been a pro- . vocative quality in what Professor Shelley has said, for he is a man who has aroused people from lethargy, often by projecting some original thought amongst them." This was the essence of remarks made by Dr. James Hight, Rector of Canterbury College and patron of the Society for Imperial Culture, Christchurch, when members of the society met to bid farewell to Professor J ames Shelley before he took up his duti-® as Director of Broadcasting. a! While regretting the professor’s de.parture, members of the society rejoiced that he went to control an instrument of such great power for national culture, said the doctor, who went on to refer to the splendid lead Professor Shelley had given ag president of the society since its inception. As a matter of fact, Professor Shelley had the distinction of being the only man to give up a University Chair in Hngland to occupy one in New Zea~ land. That action, surely, was indicative of his independent spirit. In planning and guiding the work of the Society he had shown abundant proof of his various abilities and of his characteristic quality of self-sacrifice. He had taken the whole community as his school and made its vital interests his own concern. Professor Shelley carried with him the best wishes of the members of the society, who believed he was going to a position where his work for education would have a wider scope, added . Dr. Hight. Other speakers were Mrs. DB. Rosa Sawtell, Madame Gower-Burns: anti Mr. J, Fitzgerald. A -presentation cg a landscape painting by Mr. Sydney L, Thompson was made to Professor Shelley, . Probably the greatest. single cultural influence in his life was his contact with ordinary men as a private in the Army, said: the: professor in reply, and returning thanks for the gift. In the line the man on one side of him had been a bookie’s tout and on the other 2 man of independent means. In those circumstances both were met as. solid human beings, stripped of the trappings of circumstance. To understand the nature of culture it was necessary to get down to the fundamental. human. being: -His own guide in life was summed up-.in the phrase, "Be simple," In some ways the new job he was going ‘to was @ thankless one and all he was going to do was te be, simole... \