PERSONALITIES

Southland Times, Issue 21657, 19 March 1932, Page 11

PERSONALITIES

RAMSAY MACDONALD (By S.G.A.) Ramsay MacDonald landed from the Dunedin express, and spent only a matter of minutes in Invercargill, when he took the train for Bluff to catch his boat for Australia; the local interviewer shared the journey to Bluff and quite an interesting conversation was the result. The future Prime Minister of Great Britain did not make a public appearance in this town, and I was one of the few privileged persons to meet him at the railway station; he was a tall and somewhat thin man at this time; (somewhere about twenty years ago) and no prophet was then bold enough to suggest future greatness, because MacDonald was far too retiring a person to cause people to become anxious. My reporter friend was absolutely convinced that MacDonald possessed mistaken political ideas. He contrasted New Zealand with England, and drew attention to our country’s sparse population, to the lack of enormous wealth on the one hand, and pitiable poverty on the other, and he pointed out that such a country as ours was practically without real social problems. Then he spoke of England's millions, her submerged tenth, the balance of supply and demand, and gave the impression that no other country but England could- be a political home for him. He had not so much accepted the country, as its poorer population, and it was to that class that Ramsay MacDonald looked for his own success or failure. The most conspicuous feature of MacDonald to myself was that he was a Scot. But he was of a different type to Keir Hardie. He was more of a humorist—that is, his great mission in life did not obtrude, he did not show' his attitude of deadly earnestness all the time. Again he was a literary man, and was very must interested in everything he saw for its own sake. He was just as pleased to admire the sunlight on New River Estuary, or the snow-capped Takitimos glittering in the afternoon brightness, as he was to give his opinion on the future of socialism, or the Welsh oratory of Lloyd-George. He gave me the impression that he considered New Zealand a wonderful country from many points of view, but for him its great lack of population was to be deplored. A crowded country was his only workshop. My reporter friend, discussed MacDonald with mo that afternoon, and being thoroughly secure in his position, which was one of commonplace routine, with no variation whatever, he considered himself as a person who was nominally successful. He had got on, while MacDonald, both politically and personally, was very much out of the running. So therefore, we must forgive the reporter, if something very much like bombast got into his conversation. At this time, the members of the Labour Party and the Socialists, including the Fabian Socialists, were held in very light esteem. They were considered wrongheaded by all right thinking people. Indeed, if anyone had been foolish enough to mention that our visitor would one day be Prime Minister, he would simply have been laughed at and treated as a very harmless type of visionary, to use no stronger word. Yet if we take the despised socialistic persons out of recent history, England would find it hard to keep in line with other nations. Besides Ramsay MacDonald’s there are numerous names to conjure with. Sidney Webb, the noted Fabian Socialist, and Philip Snowden have been raised to the peerage. George Bernard Shaw has become the Grand Old Man of English letters, and a resident of this town who has heard him speak from a soap-box in Hyde Park never suspected such a fate. H. G. Wells is a historian and biologist, an authority on International politics, besides being a novelist. The late Arnold Bennett, who died too soon, was a

fearless critic of contemporary art, letters and life in England. And there are others, and all of these men, although their paths varied, started from the same socialistic group. Every one of them has been a politician or political writer, and in some cases both.

If I were asked to state what appeared to be particularly striking about Ramsay MacDonald at the time, I would say without any hesitation, “he was solitary.” It was not that he was alone, but that the land and people about him were absolutely foreign to him; one could never imagine him as an immigrant. With his pleasant speech, his ingratiating manner, even his raw-boned Scotch appearance, he was still far away from this country in aims and outlook. And he made me realize for the first time how new we were as a country, how small, how poorly populated, how lacking in tradition, both political and literary. His soul was in

Westminster; he was merely a passerby. People have questioned me and asked for minute details of MacDonald, and I feel assured that I can give them what they want-—almost, for there is something that cannot go on paper, and that is a dynamic quality. It pervaded his speech, his facial expression, indeed, his whole frame, a peculiar Scots element in make-up, which other people do not possess, and which was particularly noticeable in him; when he was here his little book “The Socialist Movement” has just been written. But socialism was not held in high favour then, and it did not occur to anyone that a man who would write on such a subject could ever become Prime Minister. How far he has altered his attitude I do not know, but one thing is to be conceded to him: The very solitary, and very much interested visitor, whom one could talk to in equal terms, has now developed into a worldfamous statesman.