SIR GEORGE REID.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12398, 20 December 1909, Page 2

SIR GEORGE REID.

A FIGURE OF FUN

After a lifetime sx>ent in the serivce of his country in all grades, from that oi" a humble clerk in a public office to that of Prime Minister of Australia, Sir George H. Reid "is to be sent to London to represent the Commonwealth in the seats of the mighty.-. He will be tho nrs:i High Commissioner of Australia, arid there is no doubt that, though he has thousands of bitter political enemies, they will all applaud the decision oi: the Commonwealth Government, and with his exit from politics bury th.3 hatcht for ever. No more strenuous political fighter has ever been in Australia; no politician has ever had such armies of friends among his opponents as George Reid. No one friend or enemy doubts that he will do Australia's work well. He is devoted to the interests of Australia, and that shrewdness and sagacity which have turned his political opponents into warm personal friends will serve also to procure for him and lor Australia friends and supporters from among those who now are apathetic or hostile. Of all the men who have aspired to the post of High Commissioner, no man is better fitted to fill it than G.. H. Reid. He has been mentioned as the probable man for years past. That was because his "many qualifications were so welt known, as well as "because he has received less reward for his Federal Parliamentary work than any politician in the Federal Parliament. No more Comical figures than Sir Geo. Reid ever occupied such a prominent | position in any country. He has been caricatured all over Australasia with such a. vivid regard to truth that in hundreds of villages where he has never been seen he would be recognised at once if he set foot there. Yet no caricature eiver drawn has succeeded m expressing all the rich comedy o'l that extraordinary figure. He is enormously fat so fat that his legs seemed bowed und r the weight of his body. His almost bald head, his bristling moustache, the 1 famous eye-glass, and his baggy clothes complete a picture as indescribable in. ! words as it is in a picture. His voice is hio-h- and shrill—a complete contradiction °of his appearance. To see him is to be amused. To hear him is to be convulsed with laughter, for, m addition to all this entourage of comedy, this Falstaffian figure, he has a store of humour, rich, racy, and rare. Above that ponderous form, behind that remarkable face, there lives a bram ciear. active brilliant—a brain which nas a. queer knack of seeing the humorous side of everything, whne at the same time it pierces clean through to the underlying principle. There is Olg George Reid in Australia. Tneie is probably only one in the whole world. Nowhere else could such a bundle erf contradictions and paradoxes be found bound up in the form of one man He if more like a dozen men run together into one. There are others who are as fat otters as quaint-looking, others as mnioro-s, others as brilliant, others as popular; but th-sre » none who is all these things at ones-all these things and more, for the deeper the Hie of this extraordinary man is dredged the more extraordinary qualities and incidents are brought^ the surace. The history of Sir George Reid is the history of a generation of New South Wales'" politics and this history of the fist decade ol? federation. He has been a commanding personality in Australia for nearly 30 years. His £2litical achievements alone are incomparable alike ior their daring anl to«r Bucces. He was on e of *he foundeis of federation. He *as *he man who nearly wrecked it, and, finaUy brought it to a safe conclusion. He was the free trade oracle of Australia Ithe dare-all who, while every other colony built up tariff walls of protection/threw down all the barriers in New South Wales and made.that col^ onv the fxessfc fiscally in tne world. Had ii 'depended on Sir George Reid and New South Wales, Austria wovdd have been as free trade to-day as .new South Wales was TO years ago, and his-££-would hay* been differently wnt'ten.—N.Z. Herald.