CAREER OF REEVES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 14, 17 July 1934, Page 3

CAREER OF REEVES

CRITICISM OF NINETIES

MAKING OF A BANKER

In a memoir on tho late W. P. Beeves iv the "New Zealand Railways Magazine," Mr. Jas. Cowan recalls that, after gaining fivo scholarships at Christ's College, Christchurch,' Mr. Reeves went to England with the intention of graduating at Oxford, "but. ill health compelled.a return, to New Zealand." Then began a New Zealand political career . which led to a critical character sketch in "Political Portraits" (Joseph - Evi son) iii 1592. Evison whose norn de plume was "Quiz," raised the, question what Reeves would hay. developed into had he remained in Ent-. land. Little did the New Zcalaifd people 0f.189S realise that their youn-r political meteor was presently to be transplanted to the Old Country and to spend the rest of his life there. TORYISM BENEATH THE RED. "Had England agreed with Mr Reeves, or had Mr. Reeves agreed with England, he might have stayed there " wrote ."Quiz" in 1892. "Staying there, it is more- likely that his peculiar bent of mind would have drawn him into the vortex 5 of politics, and that the associations and circumstances among which he then dwelt would have made liime.a Conservative—a fine old crusted Tory of Tories. In time, for with his talents he must have made- his mark, ho might have oven assumed the mantlo which Benjamin Disraeli, the erstwhile red-hot Radical, left behind him when he ,went to —to somewhere where mantles lire not needed. /Who knows but, had Mr. Iteeves remained in England, that fifty years hence the English people might have been decorating his statue with' flowers—butterpups and daisies and other floral emblems of innocence. It was not to be, however, and'"so, instead of the good old English gentleman, ono of the olden time, drinking port and swearing fealty to Church and State, we have the fiery Radical, the red-hot Socialist, tho perspiring dreamer of very magnificent but perfectly Utopian dreams! Of course, wo ask .the pardon of Mr. Reeves for presuming to draw any comparison between him and Earl Beaconsfield. We were, however, pressed for an analogy." . And "Quiz" did not know that he was writing about not a Disraeli but a future chairman of directors of the National Bank of New Zealand. Even "Quiz," an audacious writer in his own sphere, could not see a banker in the "red-hot Socialist" of 1892. Yet "Quiz" did foresee a political mellowing:-- . "As far as fluency and quickness of repartee goes (Wrote "Quiz") there is probably no one in the House, except Mr. E. W. J. Reeves, who can touch W.P. But their mothocls, if not their names, riro utter]}' different. The repartee of 'Dick' Reeves redounds, with fun and geniality, while that, of his Ministerial namesake, is redolent of sulphur and vinegar. Mr. W. P. Reeves docs not shine: so brilliantly in his longer essays, being too anxious to sacrifice soiidity to effect. So anxious —some might say—to maintain the reputation of an infant phenomenon. A SUCCESS OF HEAD, NOT HEART. "Of his genuine cleverness, his capacity for hard and" sustained intellectual) toil, none can have the slightest doubt. In all that regards: education ho is head, and shoulders above his fellow--1 Ministers. < 110 has tho brain to conI ceive, tho energy and knowledge necesr sary to carry out difficult affairs, and ho has some pluck. But he has no tact, and he -does not inspire affection or even personal enthusiasm. Those most closely associated with him in politics admire his head, but do not praise his heart. It may bo that the knowledge of this fact has had a malign influence upou him and has —as in the case' of many another able man—mado him bitter. His solo idea of, politics seems to bo that they are a war of tongues, and that'he who can say the nastiest Ahing in tho nastiest manner must inevitably win. Time, however, working on material so plastic, cannot fail to mellow and round the .clover young man. As he mellows, as ho gets moio real experience of men and affairs, he will inevitably sco the folly,of many of the wild political doctrines he now appears to believe in." Mr. Cowan remarks: "That Mr. Reeves mellowed in- time we ~ know, though ho did not repent of thCv 'wild political doctrines' that Mr. Evison scarified/ The things that seemed so wild and revolutionary to some people in 1592 arc mild and commonplace indeed in 1934." '