GREATEST VICEROY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1926, Page 39

GREATEST VICEROY.

DISTINGUISHED MEN'S FUN. BEADING AND Bl___^_l__J">. A distinguished gathering assembled to greet Lord Reading at the Pilgrims' dinner to the former Viceroy. Lord Desboroughl presided, and the guests included the. American Ambassador, Lord Birkenhead ( Secretary for India), and Lords Hardinge and Chelmsford, former Viceroys. Lord Birkenhead's opening remark in proposing the "Marquis of Beading," created great hilarity. "Though the relations between myself and Viceroys is not that of biographer, it is of one who spends no inconsiderable period of his life in a waiting room at Victoria Station (laughter) with words of hypocritical regrets on my lips when they leave, and wit_ language tinged with hysterical recognition when they arrive. (Renewed laughter.) "'The career of Lord Beading has been romantic. I have heard much, of it from him, more of it from others I know, but that which he has told mc himself must be true, for no man could possibly have invented it. (Loud laughter.) "I never understood finance, never even my own. I remember once on a more than usually gloomy occasion listening to Mr. _—Senna unfolding in an op—mistic way the national financial situation. After ten gloomy and unintelligent moments I left the Chamber murmuring to myself, "This is worse than my own affairs." (Loud laughter.) *T am told that Lord Beading rendered services of the highest quality as financier in the days that succeeded the outbreak of war. I am sure he did, otherwise he would not have been selected by Mr. Lloyd George for that purpose. "Lord Heading," cancluded Lord Birkenhead, "will rank high in the long and distinguished role of those who have been, admitted to be great Viceroys." Lord Reading, in reply, referred to the fact that on his first visit to India he went as a ship's boy. "Part of my duty," he said, "was to clean out pigsties—a duty which might j have been "'spared mc, considering my j origin. (Cheers.) | "The Viceroy of that time "utterly failed to recognise in me—a boy at the fo'c'sle head—his successor, and I ' never even received an _ivitation to a garden party." (Laughter.) | When he was offered the position of Viceroy he never hesitated to accept, except for the fact that he feared whether Lady Reading could stand the climate. "I should be wanting even as a husband if I did not say what a support she was to mc!" he added. She encouraged him in difficulties, and smoothed the path for him in his work. By her work among the women of India she did more to cure racial animosity than perhaps any work, he had done-