E. G. Theodore Goes To

Big War Job

THE man responsible for the successful establishment of the gold industry in Fiji, Mr. E. G. Theodore, was ap pointed Director-General of the Allied Works Council of Australia, in February.

He has been given almost plenary powers, and he will direct something that is vaguely described as “a huge works programme, being undertaken as part of the general Allied plan for military co operation with Australia”.

Mr. Theodore is a man of much strength of character. He early took an interest in trade unionism; at 25, he was a Labour member of the Queensland Parliament; from 1919 until 1925, he was premier of Queensland; he entered the Common wealth Parliament in 1927, and was Fed eral Treasurer, 1929-31. He should have been Prime Minister; but then came the famous Chillagoe Report, in which Mr.

Theodore was pilloried.

In 1931, rejected by the electors, Mr.

Theodore turned to business, and being only 48, he prospered exceedingly. It is a far cry from “Red Ted” of Queensland politics to the chairman of directors of Consolidated Press, and managing director of Emperor and Loloma Goldmines; but he made the grade, and is now wealthy ana powerful.

It was proposed, in 1941, to appoint Mr.

Theodore to the wartime job in charge of national works—a post for which he is eminently well fitted. But all the little men in the Federal Parliament howled in chorus, and Mr. Menzies dropped the plan. The Curtin Govern ment is not so timid. It needed a good man—and it got him.