COATES OF NEW ZEALAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19364, 22 July 1925, Page 3

COATES OF NEW ZEALAND

(By Fenton Macpherson in the London Daily Mail.) The ruling power in the four great self-governing nations outside the British Islands has now passed into the hands of the native born. Mr. Joseph Gordon Coates, Prime Minister of New Zealand, is the. first of the New' Zealand-born to attain that high office. Briefly, the life of Mr. Coates may be summarised thus: A farmer, like his father before him, he was an M.P. at 33, a fighter in France at 38, a Cabinet Minister at 4.1, and Primo Minister of New Zealand at 47. Meteoric as his progress may seem to have been, there was this solid and substantial reason for his promotion Kind advancement, he worked, fought, and thought for New Zealand.

The late Mr. Massey, always a keen and unerring judge of worth and character, discerned in the young M.P. the possession of qualities and capabilities only needing development to lit their possessor for a position in which he would be able to render the highest service to his native land. Mr. Massey first tempered the enthusiasm of his young colleague, then inspired him, and later set him to work. When one task was completed another and a harder one was found for him. .Responsibility was heaped upon the young man. He shouldered it all ami was ready for more. Mr. Massey had reason to be satisfied with his pupil when the testing time was at an end. Tie had found an M.P. and had made him a Statesman. Few New Zealanders have any doubt that Mr. Massey, in his own mind, had marked out Mr. Coates as his successor. Mr. Coates may be regarded as the political heir of his great leader.

Physically, the new Prime Minister is a tall, lithe man, erect and soldierly in figure, whose body, compact of bone and muscle, is a stranger to fatigue. He has clear eyes that seem to laugh a little. His hands and face are sun-tanned and wind-bitten. He has a kindly mouth, but the chin of a just judge. A great work that Mr. Coates has done for New Zealand has been the carrying through of the gigantic scheme for the electrification of the whole country by the utilisation of its vast stores of water-power. “When it is completed,’’ ho said to me when wo discussed the scheme at Wellington, “electric light, heat, and power will be available for every home, farm and factory in New Zealand. Electric traction will replace steam on the railways. The out-back country will bo opened up with the aid of light electric, railways. I look forward also to the development of rural electric tramway systems with a halt for goods and passengers at every farm. The provision of cheap electric power, heat, and light will assist the development of the country. Where it has been introduced out-back the productivity of the farms has been increased, the drudgery of the farmers’ work lessened, and for the housewife, in town or country, domestic work has been halved, a lightening of labour that can best be appreciated in a land where servants are scarce.”