SUPERMEN OF THE WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 267, 10 November 1928, Page 12 (Supplement)

SUPERMEN OF THE WAR.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The sudden reappearance of Sir Erie Geddes in the news and the pictures on the occasion of a family air trip to Scotland serves rather to emphasise the obscurity into which lie and the other "supermen" of a decade ago have since lapsed. Sir Erie, and his brother, Sir Auckland,' the brothers' Weir, Mr.' Prother,o, Sir Robert Home, Lord Rhondda and Sir. Fisher were the men who were to win first the war and then the peace, and upon them the limelight was at that time exclusively concentrated. Where are they now! Lord Rhondda is dead, but the others'are all alive somewhere. Sir Eric Geddes has lapsed into a comfortable and profitable existence in the city; company meetings and not national affairs account for his occasional emergence into the news. Sir Auckland Geddes, once regarded as the right man for any big job, slipped from the Washington Embassy into private life. The Weirs are in the Lords, where their Scottish accents are seldom heard —the one as Lord Inverforth occasionally figures in a shipping merger; the other has relapsed into silence since his abortive attempt to popularise steel houses. Mr. Fisher enjoys the cloistered calm of university life, and his opinions, although valuable, do not sway affairs. Mr. Prothero, .the ducal estate agent, who was made Minister of Agriculture, now lives and moves in comparative obscurity as Lord Ernie, and Sir Robert Home, who is popularly believed to have been headed off the Chancellorship of the Exchequer by Mr. Churchill, now retains only, a half-hearted interest iii politics, and. devotes much more attention to big business. Yet these supermen a few years ago bestrode public life. Is it that they have tired of politics, or have politics tired Of them?