TRIBUTE BY MR HOLYOAKE

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29858, 26 June 1962, Page 10

TRIBUTE BY MR HOLYOAKE

“Extremely Able Administrator” (N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 25. Professor Leicester Webb was a distinguished New Zealander and was widely regarded as one of its greatest public servants of this generation. The tragic death of Professor and Mrs Webb would be deeply felt, said the Prime Minister (Mr (Holyoake) today. Mr Holyoake recalled that as Minister of Marketing and Agriculture from 1949, he had been closely associated with Professor Webb, who was then Director of Marketing.

“Professor Webb was an extremely able and efficient administrator, a scholar and an original thinker, whose broad outlook and fine personal example was a stimulating force for his subordinates. He gave outstanding service during the war years and afterwards as Director of I Economic Stabilisation.

"There are a great many senior officers in the Government service today whose careers have been greatly influenced by his ability and his ideas, and by his capacity both to lead and to teach,’’ Mr Holyoake said. “Professor Webb made his mark in many fields in New Zealand, and his move to Australia some years ago was a great loss to this country. However, the academic life was his real interest and objective and he made a notable contribution in public life in Australia.

“I met Professor Webb again only recently when I was in Canberra for the SE ATO conference, and I know the thoughts and deep;e«t sympathy of a wide circle | of friends and former associates in this country will go [out to his family in the sudden and grievous loss of Itheir highly-respected father and mother,” said Mr Holyoake.