The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-08-24
.GEDDES FAMILY IS
 !. BIC WAR DISCOVERY
Two Brothers and Sister Oc- cupy Three of Nest I'm
 p0rtant Places

London. August 22.-(Correspondence of The Associated Press.)-One of the use full discoveries which the war has given the British nation is the Geddes family. Sir Erie Geddes, as minister of ways and communications, and Sir Auckland Ged- des, as president of the Board of Trade, are at the head of the two foremost departments engaged in the great work of reconstruction, while their sister is eommandant of the Womans Royal Air force with a semi-military organiza- tion of several hundred under her con- trol.
 The Geddes brothers come from Scot land, which is apt to be a guarantee Of success, and before the war they were almost unknown beyond the circles of their own professions. Sir Eric Ged- des was a railroad manager, and rail- road magnates do not hold so large place in the public eye in England as they do in America smaller than bishop or Master of Fox Hounds, which last is about the most purple pinnacle of distinction.
 Sir Auckland Geddes was pQfessor of anatomy at McGill university in Tor onto. Both of them acknowledge debt to the invigorating atmosphere of the North American continent, where Eric first worked as a lumberman and later had his first railroading lessons on the Baltimore and Ohio.
 Sir Fries first billet in the govern ment service was for the organization and management of the hundreds or miles of railroad lines behind the British army in France. which he pulled out or something like chaos where regular stan officers had left it. Then he succeeded Arthur Balfour at the head of the ad- miralty, at time when there were com plaints that the navy was in the hands of a rather hide-bound board Of ad- rnirals and needed more ginger-whch it got.
 Sir Auckland entered public life in the uniform of private soldier, but he soon graduated to the war office to be Lord Derby's right hand man in the di- rectbon of the Derby recruiting scheme. Step by step he became minister of ma tionaI service, president of the local gov ernment board, minister of reconstruc- tion and finally president Of the board of trade which roughly corresponds to the Department of the Interior at Wasn- ington
 Just now the two brothers have charge of the two toughest problems of Lloyd George's- administration, the reconstruc- tion and the standardization, or other wise, as the issue may be decided, of the transport and mining systems Of the United Kingdom, a large order. There is little family resemblance be- 1 tween the brothers at hrst glance. SIT
 Erie is tall and broad, of the type called m massive, and looks every inch man
 of big business who is used to have his own way, and when he puts his head
 to the plough, to drive deep and
 straight furrow, but his pink smooth
 shaven face suggests an outdoor life more than the office Sir Auckland also is tall and smooth shaven, but he Is thin, with spectacles and a dome-like forehead, and looks every molecule professor Neither of them is an orator, and the parliamentary tactics display none of the subtleties of the politician, and like President Wilson, they sit at their desks in Whitehall clad in business suits instead of the ministerial livery of frock coat. Sir Eric reads his speech es in the House of Commons and reads them without any flourishes of elocution, and while they are packed full of meat, it is evident that unlike Winston Churchill Austen Chamberlain; he burns no midnight oil polishing his sentences.
 It is significant of the new times that the British government for the two most serious works of reconstruction goes outside of "the governing class'' of the old nobility and the ranks of the pro- fessional politicians and selects a rail- road manager and college professor both schooled in the practical life of North America.