MINISTER CHOSEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 120, 17 November 1936, Page 11

MINISTER CHOSEN

GOVERNOR OF SOUTH AFRICA

HON. PATRICK DUNCAN

(Received November 17, 10 a.m.) ! LONDON, November 16. It is officially announced that the Hon. Patrick Duncan, Minister of Mines, is to succeed the Earl of Clarendon as Governor-General of South Africa. , The Hon. Patrick Duncan was born in 1870 and is a son of Mr. John Duncan, of Banffshire. After going to Oxford he entered the Civil Service in 1894, and was private secretary to Sir Alfred Milner. He was Treasurer of the Transvaal in 1901 and Colonial Secretary from 1903 to 1906. In 1006 he was acting Lieutenant-Governor, and he has been Minister of Mines since 1933. Previously he held the Union portfolios of the Interior, Public Health, and Education. He is a barrister of the Inner Temple and an Advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa. "The only Englishman of outstanding importance in South African politics— and be is a Scotsman—is Patrick Duncan, the Minister of Mines," wrote Captain H. C. Armstrong in the "Daily Telegraph" recently. "I had always heard of him as the brightest boy in Milner's 'kindergarten'; the brightest of the young men* selected by Milner to help him, after the Boer War, to reorganise the Transvaal and the Free State and to teach the Boers how to run their own affairs. I expected a brilliant and sparkling genius. The first time I saw him was across a luncheon table, and I saw a tall, heavy man, made heavier by the years, and with a manner which held one at arm s length, for it was so self-contained, silent, and chill. I saw a typical dour Highlander from Scotland. "My later experiences confirmed my first impressions. Patrick Duncan started life as a civil servant in the Inland Revenue ■ after a satisfactory career at Balliol College, Oxford. And to the top of the Civil Service he would have risen, becoming one of those capable, steady, unhurried, and unhurnable officials one meets in Government offices in Whitehall who are utterly! honest and conscientious. Duncan was fitted exclusively to be one of that band of civil servants who are the real, though unproclaimed, rulers of England. And yet today Duncan holds a curious position. For nearly thirty years he has been the admirer, follower, and assistant of Smuts, and though many of the Dutch have now nothing but curses for Smuts, I found all through the country, and especially in the Transvaal, that the Dutch were looking to Patrick Duncan as their possible leader, while many of the English, especially in' Natal, looked at him askance, saying that he had given away,their interests and gone back on his own people. "Patrick Duncan has been overshadowed perhaps by the character of Smuts. As long as Smuts is there he will be contented and as loyal as Havenga is to Hertzog, but when Smuts is gone it is possible that he will be able to come out of his shell, warm I his blood, ignore caution, take a risk or two, and call to people." I . ——..■■■-

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