No. 1 ROTARIAN

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 167, 11 April 1935, Page 4

No. 1 ROTARIAN

Founder of World-wide Movement MR. PAUL HARRIS TO VISIT WELLINGTON When some 30 years ago Mr. Paul P. Harris, a young Vermont lawyer, then resident in Chicago, asked a coal merchant client to dinner, the germ of the great idea of Rotary was isolated. It has spread remarkably and now there are many hundreds of clubs in 70 countries of the world. The coal dealer was one Sylvester Schiole, and there was an affinity of spirit between him and his host, as at that dinner they decided to promote a club of friendliness, which would include one representative of each vocation. This rule may not always be strictly regarded now, but the original idea limited the membership on those lines. These two men were so set on the idea that the same night they proceeded to double their membership, and I waylaid a tailor and a mining engi-| neer, and so the first Rotary Club in the world was formed. Wellington Rotarians are looking forward to the arrival of Mr. Harris next Monday. Three Decades of Growth. Rotary’s three decades of steady growth is a remarkable development, writes Dorothea Kahn in the “Christian Science Monitor.” Unchecked either by the World War or the wave of extreme nationalism that followed it, it has gone on to wider and wider activities in the field of goo'd will among nations and races. And the story is all the more impressive when one considers that the movement was set going by a man whose outstanding characteristic is small-town friendliness. Paul Harris seems the very opposite of the clubman type. Descended from four generations of Vermonters, he has the simple dignity of the Green Mountain people. His slightly ascetic appearance and gentle manner suggest the university professor. He loves his quiet home, set back on a wooded hill in a Chicago suburb and named “Comely Bank” to please his Scottish wife. Here he cultivates a wildflower garden and makes all visitors—birds or people—warmly welcome. / Many other persons, as Mr. Harris, likes to emphasise, have played selfsacrificing roles in its development; and without organisers or “evangelists” it could not have spread as it has. But without this quiet New Englander with a vision of international friendships, how could Rotary have taken root at all? Hearing Paul Harris tell of his life, one feels that from boyhood he intuitively prepared to build this organisa- : tion. Brought up by devoted grand- 1 parents, he absorbed a sturdy idealism which later found expression in ■ Rotary’s ethical standards. At the ' same time, he tasted the delights of boy friendships which involved pranks not looked on with favour by his decor- : ous neighbours, so he recalls. i And how, in this small restricted world, did he get his ideas of world ■ contacts? “Reading travel books, I suppose,” ] Mr. Harris said when asked this ques- i tion. “I had a great curiosity about what was on the other side of the 1 world.” 1

He graduated from the University of Vermont, then took a law degree at the University of lowa. But before he settled down to practise law, he said, he decided to spend five years seeing

the world. Five years is a long time to youth, and Paul Harris had no money. But no matter. Resourceful in picking up jobs, he managed to see the country, making friends who were later to be valuable in spreading Rotary. Twice he worked his way to Europe in cattle boats. In 1896 he settled by deliberate choice in Chicago. Nine years later he founded the world’s first Rotary Club there. No Bounds to Friendship. And why did it become international? To Mr. Harris it was a commonsense development. His reasoning on this point is clearly stated in his autobiography. “How ridiculous to assume that friendship can be confined by national boundary lines, religious faiths or political affiliations; friendship is not anaemic; it overrides such considerations; it is one thing of which there can never be too much.” It was as simple as that, the internationalising of Rotary. There just wasn’t any logical reason, as Paul Harris saw it, for Rotarian friendships to stop at the Rio Grande, or Niagara Falls, or even at the Pacific Ocean. He expressed himself on this subject in a recent interview. “There’s nothing to this superiority complex notion. One country excels in one line, another in something else,” he said. “We can all learn from each other.” Rotary practises what its founder preaches. A visitor to Europe last year reported finding an Italian doctor presiding in a Rotary Club in Palestine; a Frenchman in Beirut, Syria; Moslem pashas in two Egyptian clubs; a Jew in Vienna; and a “foreigner” in the chair during a Rotary Club meeting in Spain. Rotarians aim to express international good will at home. Imbued with Rotary’s purpose, members have gone out and organised Rotary in far places. American Rotarians seemed to feel from the start that they should do a little Rotarian missionary work when business took them ) abroad. Some helped to extend the organisation through their branch offices in other countries. The Rotary Club of London was organised by Americans with London business connections, Mr. Harris recalled.