SIR PHILIP GIBBS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1937, Page 2

SIR PHILIP GIBBS

UNSELFISH AND IDEALIST

Frank Swinnerton, author and critic, writing of Sir Philip Gibbs, says: Sir Philip Gibbs is an idealist.

During the war he made a new reputation as war correspondent by slipping authority in the fighting zone and discovering a few truths for himself; and he has since travelled much about the world with the object of learning what are the fundamental causes of international disquiet—a desolating pilgrimage. His journeys have not brought him happiness, and he is deeply troubled by what he has seen and heard; but he has a. stout heart, and a head which, as I can testify from experience, is well stored with matters less dark than those upon which he dwells in hours of gloom. He has an air of gravity which, in depressing company, must be quite severe.

But hear him describe a trip through Russia in which he alonethrough, as he alleges, the particular brand of cigarettes which he smokes —escaped the horrors of vermin, and note the pure enjoyment of his tales of conversations and contretemps in France, Hungary, the United States and the United Kingdom, and you will discover another man altogether. He remains through every change an idealist; but he becomes as a companion such delightful fun that the writer with a message for mankind is obscured.

I have never seen him working, and I do not know what his methods of work are; but all his books and writing materials are away from the house, in a study that was once a cowshed, while a piano beside his desk suggests that ever an anon he consoles himself with a little music. He may well do so. But whether he does play or not, he is always ready to entertain his friends; for a less selfish being has never lived. A good, quiet, humane, understanding man, he is one in whom the Christian virtues are so joined with perception of the odd and the ridiculous that one’s feeling of affection for him grows with every meeting.