A Historian's Vignette.

Miss N. E. Coad, in her history “From Tasman to Massey,” thus admirably sums up the political character of the war-period Premier:

“He was considered the farmers’ friend. Did he not understand their needs and sympathise with them in their difficulties? If anyone could help them to make 2d. a pound more on their wool surely it was he. Patriotic, imperialistic, steady, industrious, unimaginative, prosaic, he stands forth as a representative New Zealander. Always well disposed, and obviously sincere, ‘Plain Bill of the Square Deal,’ as he was called, commanded respect alike in high Imperial circles and in the humblest New Zealand electorate. He died at the age of 69, in the year 1925, after guiding the country through the most terrible crisis the world has ever seen. If ever a pilot weathered a storm it was William Ferguson Massey.”

The seven years of heavy administrative toil that followed the end of the war made an increasingly heavy tax on the Prime Minister's physical resources. Like all successful and popular politicians, he overtaxed his strength. Had he been content to remain on his Mangere farm, quietly plying the calling of his yeoman fathers, he probably would be living still, a cheery octogenarian, judging ploughing matches—no better judge in the Dominion—and making felicitous speeches at the Agricultural Show, and, of course, heartily condemning the Government of the day. But the long toil at the desk, the long Parliamentary hours, the insufficient exercise, the unhealthy and unnatural conditions under which responsible legislators habitually work, laid him in his grave. He was mourned for as a strong and honest man, who for all his limitations served his country well in a period of unexampled stress.

The grave of Richard Seddon looks down on Wellington from the breezy heights behind the city heart. The sleeping place of William Ferguson Massey is on a beautiful and commanding site, the steep extremity of Point Halswell, looking out over the waters and shores of Port Nicholson. There is no tomb like it in New Zealand; that gleaming monument of marble like some fragment of a classic temple, its graceful curve set off by a dusky selvage of young pohutukawa trees, a fitting frame from Massey's beloved shores of the North.