To most people in this country, I suppose, Sir Hubert
Murray, who died on Tuesday as Governor of Papua some thirteen years after he had reached the retiring age, was primarily Professor Gilbert Murray's brother. Actually he was one of the most remarkable men in the Colonial service—in this case the Australian service, for he was appointed by the Government of Australia. He stayed on in Papua because the natives refused to let him go. He had been their friend even more than their Governor. He had made a lifelong study of native customs, in particular of the various varieties of witchcraft, and his annual reports were mines of information on local anthropology. A strange career for a man who took firsts in Mods and Greats at Oxford in the middle 'eighties and won a medal with four clasps in the South African War. Papua is far away, and Murray's roots were in Australia, not in England. Otherwise he would be widely known, as he should be, as one of the greatest Colonial Governors of our time.
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