THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19700, 29 January 1926, Page 10

THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE.

NEW DIRECTOR. APPOINTMENT OP SIR W. PURSE. (From Odr Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 15. Mr A. M. Samuel, M.P., President of the Board of Governors of the Imperial Institute, has appointed Lieutenant-general Sir William Purse, K.C.8., D.S-.0., to be Director of the Institute as from January 1. Sir R. Redmayne, K.C.8., who has acted temporarily as director during the period of reorganisation and amalgamation with the Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau, retires at his own request at the end of the year, and will become chairman of the Institute’s Advisory Council on Minerals. It will he remembered that the committee of inquiry into the Imperial Institute insisted on the importance of the director being an administrative officer rather than a scientific or technical expert. He was to he responsible for the administration of the institute under the general supervision of the proper Government department (which it has now been decided should be the Department of Overseas Trade), while all matters- of a scientific and technical character should he controlled by the Board of Governors, with the aid of such advisory councils and committees as might be required. A DISTINGUISHED CAREER. Sir W. Purse, who, after a distinguished military career, was Region Director of the London Region under the Minister of Pensions until the post was abolished as part of the policy of centralising pension administration, and who has since been engaged as chief administrative officer In the organising of the Government’s Stadium displays during tho British Empire Exhibition, has been appointed the administrative director of the institute. An advisory council, with subsidiary committees, has been constituted for minerals, and an advisory council for vegetable and animal products is in process of formation. The position of director was open to the whole of the Empire, and there was a number of applications from the Dominion. Sir James Allen, who is a member of the Executive Committee responsible for the appointment, states that of all the applicants Sir William Purse undoubtedly had the best qualifications for the position. He is a man in which the Imperial spirit is greatly developed, and his administrative qualities are of a high order.