JOHN MACMILLAN BROWN

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21377, 21 January 1935, Page 11

JOHN MACMILLAN BROWN

■ « A PATHMAKER FOR WOMEN (srBCULLT WMJTW »0R TH» r»«S8.) [By JESSIE MAOKAY.J A clearsighted leader of thought, a cardinal moulder of New Zealand's academic life, a lasting power in New Zealand's dawning literature, a majestic figure in the late-found field of Pncific research into human beginnings, an undeviating guide towards the full knowledge that exalts and preserves the genius of a well-founded people—all this and more was joined in the unique personality which in a moment, as it seems, has left us. A warm, benign, equable presence, ever friendly and approachable, is now but a proud and mournful memory in the country which owes him a debt for 60 illustrious years of service. Abler pens than mine are dwelling upon his unmatched record as scholar, teacher, founder of pioneer collegiate institutions, professor, chancellor, and master of academic contacts with a world beyond even the growing Pacific sphere. One field of his life's work, however, I beg leave to emphasise, in a world-hour that calls for such emphasis. So old now is the story of how the young Scots professor, straight from man-made Oxford, at once imposed his individual idea of woman's right and woman's intellectual capacity on a young and plastic university, and so made the almost unknown Antipodes the starting point for woman's academic emancipation all over the world—so much have the contingent ideas of freedom and opportunity, realised then by few if any, but himself, become a part of our human equipment, that it is a duty fo ask ourselves to-day how much longer and harder had been our climb out of the western zenana-walls had Professor Macmillan Brown never lived. He was a pathfinder for women, and so, as he realised more and more to the end. a pathfinder for the race. He gave to life the tender of a fruitful activity that never was spared nor halted; for eight long decades he was a toiler and a seeker after knowledge. Life gave him back in rich measure opportunity, success, and tne flower of romance. He had dreamed loftily, and the earnest of his dream came in a perfect marriage, set round with all the circumstance that a novelist's hand might have supplied. When, too soon, the earthly tie was broken, home with his two daughters still remained the centre of all for him. The element of drama, unsought, unstudied during a life of unchanged simplicity, curiously invested the long years that brought new friends, new fields, new honours, holding at bay Time's wonted revenges on man's sustained endeavour. His Scottish tenacity, housed in a frame fit and truly guarded as the spirit's instrument, carried him through worlds of new adventure, undertaken when most men seek the pensioned-off repose; all adventure seasoned with the witty philosophy of his race. But in all years, this remained: he was woman's pathfinder, friend, and champion to the latest hour he lived. He had grasped the everlasting romance of the ages, and no one 'who does this is ever outside the essential sphere of drama as clear eyes on earth and the changeless regard of Omnipotence behold it. Numberless kindnesses to women unobtrusively dotted the long way of his pilgrimage; he had the rare capacity for friendship that inspires confidence in the most timid. Nothing more dramatic could well have been staged by destiny for his

last function-of Chancellorship. Prevented from attendance owing to illness, he was ready, with his address, to be read by the Vice-Chancellor—an address full of the old fire and consolidation of outlook. In these last hours, the call as yet unheard, he knew his words were ringing through the well-known halls of former triumphs. But I wonder how many that listened caught the faithful prescience of their import at the end. "It is not impossible," he wrote, for a highly educated and swiftly advancing country to swing back into barbarism. . . . Scandinavia, Switzerland, the United States of America, and the British Empire have been first to recognise rights and capacities of women to education and to the franchise. II there is one thing that will ensure retrogression into barbarism, it will be the exclusion of women from the higher education, from public life; and their immurement in household duties. It will withdraw from the boyhood and youth and meetings of men one of the chief refining influences, that of highly educated women." These words could only be weakened by further comment. For minds attuned to the needs and dangers of the times, they are more than inspired statement. They have in them all the depth of warning that waits on prophecy. It behoves New Zealand women both to remember the debt they owe to this intrepid pathfinder, and to hear the righteous charge these new responsibilities laid upon them for all time. In John Macraillan Brown, they lose a wise and faithful champion, but stand, in these words, uttered on the brink of eternity, to retain an inspiration to live as befits the mothers of that age he foresaw and laboured for.