Harold Tahana Thomas

IN more than 10,000 towns and cities of the world a businessman's mark of success in the community is an invitation to join the local Rotary Club. This week, as they sat down to their weekly luncheons, good fellowship flowed like melted honey among the members of the world's most prestigious service club. There was a fervent prayer (nondenominational), a hearty meal (liquor is never served), an informative talk (usually described as "inspiring" by the local press), and spirited songs ("R-O-T-A-R-Y, that spells Rotary, known on land and sea") that members must sing lustily under penalty of a fine.

But most important to Rotarians, there was a first-hand report by delegates just back from a worldwide conclave of 16,000 Rotarians and their wives in Manhattan last week. Subject of the report: Harold Tahana Thomas, 67, the new president of Rotary International.

Harold Thomas is a huskily built (5 ft. 9 in., 170 lbs.), forthright New Zealander who has forsaken his work as chairman of a chain of New Zealand furniture stores for a packed, people-meeting year that might make even the most gregarious Rotarian wince. In four frenetic convention days, Thomas cheer fully paraded through an endless round of meetings, shows and dinners (ten in one day without eating a bite), lost four lbs. He is already booked for dozens of Rotary meetings around the globe. When he discovered that several U.S. states had not been visited by a Rotary president for five years, he said: "I'll try to visit 'em all."

THOMAS stands at the pinnacle of an organization devoted to broadening businessmen's horizons and promoting idealistic business ethics. Founded in Chicago in 1905 by Lawyer Paul Harris, Rotary has talked and handshaken its way into every state and 113 countries and colonies. It now has 471,000 mem bers, is growing at the rate of a new club every day. Since each Rotary club admits only one member from each business or professional field, men who never got a Rotary bid have founded their own rival clubs, such as the huge (594,484 members) Lions International.

Based on slogan-voiced motives --"Service above Self," "He Profits Most Who Serves Best" -- Rotary has easily lent itself to the gibes of satirists. Sin clair Lewis roasted Rotarians and their ilk in Babbitt for their seeming inability to clothe even the most sincere thoughts in anything but platitudes. H. L. Mencken placed them squarely among the booboisie for their garrulous camaraderie and fetish for nicknames. Cracked Mencken: "The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack." The Roman Catholic Church has recognized Rotary's influence in a backhanded way by forbidding its priests to join Rotary and advising laymen that Rotary shows "undue devotion to monopolistic capitalism." an allusion to the well-known fact that Rotarians prefer to do business with one another.

BUT even Rotary's critics and satirists have mellowed in the face of the club's accomplishments. Rotary contributes millions of dollars each year to charity, is the major supporter of the annual Easter Seal drive, and in the last eleven years has given scholarships to more than 1,200 students from 67 countries. A neighborhood club at heart. Rotary would like, as Harold Thomas puts it, to "make the whole world a neighborhood, and bring it even more bridges to friendship." It set up the cultural exchange group that later became UNESCO, settled a 150-year-old boundary dispute between Ecuador and Peru.

Harold Thomas has spent most of his adult life following Rotary's twin ideals. Says he: "I think Rotary day and night." Born in a tent in the wilds of frontier New Zealand (his middle name honors the Maori chief whose wife delivered him), he fought in France in World War I, went back to Auckland to become manager of a tiny furniture company. He soon took over, expanded the company until it now spreads through New Zealand. He joined Rotary in 1923, only two years after the club got to New Zealand. As the "NZers" flocked into Rotary, Thomas' responsibilities grew with the club; he became local president, district governor, sparked the movement that more than trebled Rotary membership in New Zealand.

After World War II Thomas moved into international Rotary as a director, won quick recognition as an articulate Rotary spokesman and idea man. As Rotary's president, he will devote his time to developing more "people-to-people contact" among nations. Says he: "There is a tremendous area for the development of friendship and good will on a personal basis--something no government can accomplish. We should not be concerned with the techniques of peace, but with the will to peace."

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