THE FAIRFAXES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 123, 27 May 1930, Page 9

THE FAIRFAXES

OLD "SYDNEY MORNING .

HERALD"

(From'"The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, loth May.

Perhaps the best tribute to the popularity of. the late Mr. Geoffrey Fairfax, senior director and proprietor of the "Sydney Morning Herald" is tho fact that messages of sympathy are still pouring into ' the almost century-old newspaper of the Fairfaxes ■ from all parts of Australia and beyond it. Sydney had a very warm corner in its heart for "Geoffrey," as he wai popularly known, because of his geniality and unaffected simplicity and modesty. He was as well-liked outside the "Herald" as he was in it, among all ranks and grades of its employees. There were few people whom he did not know and greet in his daily walk between his office and the Union Club, which he had frequented for so many years. Mr. Fairfax was the old-fashipned type of gentleman now quickly disappearing. Unliko many of Sydney's rich men,'who spend more timo away from Australia than in it, Mr. Fairfax, right to the end stuck tp the old newspaper whoso high and proud traditions he did s6 much, in a quiet, unobtrusive way to preserve. Some people believe that the late Sir James Fairfax's son, Mr. Warwick Fairfax, now tho youthful controlling force in tho "Herald," wlio a fe,w months ago toured New Zealand, may be inclined to depart somewhat from tbe Conservative policy of the old morning paper, but this belief is not shared hy those who know either the young man now at the helm or the. spirit and traditions of the "Herald."

In fact, «»y radical alteration of tho "Herald" or its make-up would bs regarded as high treason by its vast army of'readers. The old paper, right down the long years, has pursued a set course and has never deviated from it. It is one' of the reasons for its success