AUSTRALIA’S LOSS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 185, 6 July 1945, Page 5

AUSTRALIA’S LOSS

TRIBUTES TO MR CURTIN UNSELFISH SERVICE (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Rcc. 10.45 a.m.) CANBERRA, July 0 The body of Mr Curtin is lying in state in King’s Hall, Parliament House, this morning. At 2 p.in.' a memorial service will lie conducted in the hall. During the lying in state the body is being guarded by personnel from the three Services. At 2.30 the casket will be placet! on a gun carriage and moved with a guard of honour to Fairbairn Airport, Canberra, from where it will be down to Perth. Parliament is to adjourn until July 18. Mr Curtin is to bo buried in the Perth that lie loved so passionately, at the Karrakatta cemetery. His close personal friends, the Presbyterian Minister of Canberra and the Congregational Minister of Perth, will conduct the burial service. Mr Curtin was a Catholic. Besides Airs Curtin, only the Prime Minister’s son, Sergeant John Curtin, of the R.A.A.F., was in Canberra. Airs Elsie Cole, a daughter to whom Air Curtin was devoted, is in Perth herself ill and she had to be informed by telephone.

Pew were allowed to see Air Curtin over the closing days when it was realised that he tvas sinking. A close friend said Air Curtin kept his high spirits and was brave to the end. Although he had a setback some hours before the end he told the night nurse two of his favourite jests. Five hours before dying, Air Curtin said “Good night” to his trusted chauffeur, ATr Ray Tracy. “I have had a tough day today,” Air Curtin said. The tough day ended at 4 a.m. SECOND TO DIE IN OFFICE.

Ho is the second Prime „Minister to die in office, the last being Mr Lyons in 1938. As well as having held the Prime Ministership during the most exacting years that Australia has ever experienced, Air Curtin lias a record for continuous service as a Labour Prime Alimster. His total service was three years nine months and one day. The previous longest continuous service for a Labour Crime Minister was that of the late Air Andrew Fisher with three years one month 20 days from 1910 to 1913. Mr Fisher’s overall service was longer with four years nine months and 20 days.

Outstanding tributes to the sincerity of purpose and devotion to duty of Air Curtin have been paid by those in the Labour ranks and by his political opponents. All give unqualified recognition to the firm leadership with which Mr Curtin steered Australia through the period of the gravest war crisis.

“Australia has lost her greatest son,” said the Acting-Prime Minister (Air Forde). “The captain has been stricken when in sight, of the shore. I know that Mrs Curtin will be fortified by the knowledge that all men and women of our race will never lorget John Curtin the man and the great works be did for his country, and. indeed, for humanity.” The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Menzies) in a tribute of high esteem said: “1 shall recall a friend with whom I lived on terms of unbroken personal regard and a statesman who wore himself out in the

unselfish service of his country.” Mr Facklcit, Leader of; the Country Party, said: “1 have suffered a deep personal loss. 1 always regarded the late Prime 'Minister as one whose sincerity of purpose and loyalty to Labour ideals entitled him to public respect. His task of marshalling the national resources to resist the threat from Japan was of the greatest magnitude.”

The arrangements that have operated during Air Curtin’s long illness will enable the machinery of government to continue to function smoothly until the new Prime Minister is named. In tlie meantime Air Forde holds authority from the Governor-General to act as Prime Minister. The final discussion m-ill take place today after the return of the Duke of Gloucester from his abbreviated tour .of the northern operational areas. Under the Federal Parliamentary Labour Party rules, in an event such as this there has to be a formal election of a neuPrime Alinister.