The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 1932. A GREAT NEW ZEALANDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 116, 18 May 1932, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 1932. A GREAT NEW ZEALANDER.

Por J/ie cause thai lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in'the distance, And the good that we can do.

If every New Zealander Avho has benefited by the legislation framed and piloted through Parliament by William Pcmber Reeves subscribed even a trifle in his honour, what a monument could be erected to his memory! Yet to thousands in the classes for whose benefit he specially laboured, men and women who by his efforts have enjoyed higher wages, better conditions and stronger security of employment, ho is only a name, if that. It is nearly forty years since he closed his political career in New Zealand to begin another fruitful career in England, ani in that period, despite his official connection! with New Zealand, despite "The Long White Cloud" and other books connected with this country, and his keen and active interest in all our doings, it was inevitable that the figure of the man and his achievements should become blurred to his countrymen. His passing reminds us what an extraordinarily gifted and versatile man he was, and what this young country owes to his intellect and culture, his energy and his ideals.

A statesman with a greater range of accomplishments and interests is not to be found in our annals. He was the scholarathlete—he represented Canterbury in football and cricket —and the statesman-philosopher, who brought principles to bear upon problems and could write with charming and witty detachment about matters in which he had been intimately concerned. He was a member of the strongest and ablest Cabinet New Zealand has known, and his record is written in capital letters right across our industrial and social life. The best tribute to his 3ioneering work as Minister of Labour is that of Professor Condliffe, which we quoted yesterday —that within five years he placed on tile Statute Book a complete code of Labour legislation, without having accepted a single hostile amendment of major importance, and that in all essentials this has remained the New Zealand code ever since. In England he mixed with the best intellectual company on equal terms, and it was a great compliment to himself and his native country when he was chosen to direct the London School of Economics. New Zealand was justly proud of him as a fine flower of culture grown in a pioneering society. Among his literary gifts to his native country "The Long White Cloud" ranks first. It is our best historical work, and would that all histories written in older communities had its charm of style! Of his slender output of verse, two or three poems—notably "The Passing of the Forest" are classics of our small literature. His countrymen will take grateful and affectionate farewell of a very distinguished New Zealander who served his country so well in so many fields.