MR. SAVAGE'S WORTH

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1940, Page 8

MR. SAVAGE'S WORTH

DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE

Paying a high tribute to the personality, temperament, and work of the late Mr. Savage, the Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. W. E. Parry) said today that it was the recognition by the people of Mr. Savage's worth and selfless attitude in all things that mattered in public welfare, that had placed him in the highest position the citizens could give in the administration of the affairs of their country. Support and admiration of the people were gained, not only by words, but by actions, and it could truthfully be said that the late Prime .Minister had earned, as well as merited, the public esteem in which he had been held throughout the cpuntry. "I knew the intimate, personal side of Mr. Savage," added Mr. Parry. "In the early days of the campaign and fights of the Labour Party, Mr. Savage and I not only lived close to each other at Ponsonby, but we occupied adjoining office rooms in Auckland Gity. We worked together for the people's cause, for which the party stood. I quickly learned that he was a man who, without ostentation, gave no consideration whatever to his own personal self and interests. Tt was the people around him that counted all the time. • CHARITABLE DISPOSITION. "Mr. Savage's practice was to get a job, and then when he had gathered together a few pounds he would leave the job and devote his time" and earnings to the cause and ideals he had at heart. Many a man who had a job to go to in the country but no money to get there has benefited from the slender purse of Mr. Savage. It has been correctly and estimably stated of him that, in the charitableness of his disposition, he paid for the privilege of working for the movement, which had his wholehearted devotion." In the greafcinfluenza epidemic which swept the Dominion in 1918, Mr. Parry said, no man had been more helpful to the rank and file of the people than had been Mr. Savage. "Wa worked together in that terrible- ordeal sufferered by the people," the Minister said, "and I, with very many people,' shall ever remember the great deeds of Mr. Savage in that epidemic. We came together to Parliament in 1919. We shared a couple of rooms in Hill Street close to the atmosphere of the legislative halls. We were both green to the ways of Parliament, but not green to the.ideals we had at heart. It was not long before the ideals of the late leader unfledged as he was then to Parliamentary customs, resounded on the floor of the House. Those ideals are legislative enactments todayideals which not only show the . farseeing statesmanship of tine late Mr. Savage, but show the steadfastness and grit of the man and the fighter that he was."

Motions of regret at the death of Mr. Savage have been passed by the Hutt Valley Power Board, the Wellington Colleges Board of Governors, the Wellington Centre of the St. John Ambulance Association, the New Zealand Educational Institute.