MEN OF MARK

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 11

MEN OF MARK

UNDERSTANDING MIND

LORD TWEEDMUIR'S HEROES

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, August 26.

In his first visit to the Pacific Coast, Lord Tweedsmuir, the GovernorGeneral, delivered an address which men are fain to remember, for wisdom, counsel, and the evocatiQn of thought that adorn the nature of man. Like Ulysses, he has been part of all he has met, has seen and known the great men of his time, and has judged them with understanding of heart, not less than of mind. "There can be no better luck," he said, "than, for a man to have seen a good deal of people who are enormously his superior in intellect and character. It keeps him humble, and he is not too apt to rate his own modest capacities too high."

We can form our besti personal estimate of the Governor-General in the affection of his reference to King George. "He had that simplicity and goodness which every man of every nation could understand—he appealed to the common denominator in human nature everywhere. When I am inclined to be pessimistic about the future, I always console myself ,by thinking *of what King George meant to the world, and the immense power which dutifulness and kindness can have over the hearts and imagination of mankind." •

As an example of one whose gift of expression gave him power, he referred to Lloyd George as "like an electric current, whose strength is scarcely lessened by transmission over great distances. He had the most perfect gift of expression I have ever known. That is why he becomes so great a popular leader. He is wholly comprehensible. He can be assessed by the plain man, and this sense of intimacy among millions is the greatest of assets for a democratic statesman."

Of other notable men he had met, Lord Tweedsmuir observed:—

Lord Milner.—"He had superb powers of insight and comprehension and the most inflexible courage; but none of the gifts of a popular leader. When the history of the-British War Cabinet is written it will be seen that almost all the heaviest executive work was done by him."

Lord Haig.—"He was quite incapable of expressing himself in speech, except at a military conference. The consequence was he never became an intelligible and popular figure to the ordinary soldier."

Lord Balfour.—"He was wholly intelligible, and though his personality was very unlike that of the ordinary man, and though he lived always on a level of thought much higher than most of us, he secured the complete trust of his countrymen."

Cecil Rhodes.—'l do not think any man had a saner or wider vision of Empire, but he could never express, it. When he tried to explain his ideas he used to fall into the most lamentable banalities. The truth is that Bhodes was a great poet without any of the poet's gift of expression. He could only expound in action, not in words, his vivid imagination. Happily, his acts remain."