H. H. Vaskess

Retirement After 36 Years of Hard Service

AFTER 36 years in the service of the High Commission for the Western Pacific, 18 of them as Secretary, Mr. Henry Harrison Vaskess, CMG, OBE, will retire next month. He is 56 years old.

Mr. Vaskess joined the Commission as a clerk in 1911; and except for four years’ service in World War I he has lived in Suva, as a member of the Com mission’s executive staff, ever since. There is no official better known in the British Territories of Gilbert & Ellice Colony, Solomons Protectorate. New Hebrides Condominium and Kingdom of Tonga, and few more highly esteemed. He was acting Secretary for long periods between 1920 and 1929, and he became Secretary in 1929.

His has been no easy task. The admin istration of those comparatively poor Islands Territories was attended by scores of problems not known in coun tries with larger revenues and resources —and the chief executive naturally col lected all the kicks, and was rarely praised. No man in Suva, these last 20 years, lived closer to his desk than Henry Vaskess. He has well-earned 20 years of fishing and gard'ening. He has a charming wife and a couple of lusty sons, who have been at school in Sydney for some years.

MR. C. D. CHAMBERLAIN, previously Colonial Secretary in Gambia, is to succeed Mr. Vaskess. The title of the post is to he changed to Chief Secretary of the Commission.

Mr. Chamberlain, who is 49, went to Gold Coast in 1925 as an Assistant Dis trict Commissioner. In 1930 he was seconded to the Colonial Office as an assistant principal, and in 1943 he was appointed Colonial Secretary. Gambia.

He went home on sick leave in 1944, and since March, 1946, he has been employed in the Colonial Office. He is married and has two children. He is expected in Suva in February or early March.