EVENTFUL CAREER ENDED

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22005, 1 February 1937, Page 11

EVENTFUL CAREER ENDED

SIR PERCIVAL PHILLIPS DEAD SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF "DAILY MAIL" LONDON, January 29. The death has occurred of Sir Percival Phillips, Special correspondent of the "Daily Mail." The newspaper career of Sir Percival Phillips began in the United States, where he was born in 1877. He resigned from the Pittsburg "Times' on the outbreak of war between Greece and Turkey in 1897. He joined the staff of the London "Daily Express in 1901, and remained with that paper for 21 years during which he carried out many important missions. Among these was his departure for Tokyo in 1903. at 18 hours' notice, to arrive five days before diplomatic relations with Russia were broken off and to witness the mobilisation of the Japanese army, ye was in Tokyo for two months, m charge of the news bureau, and was later sent to China and southern Manchuria. , , . After his return to England he wM for a year news editor of the Daily Express," but immediately afterwards he resumed work as a special correspondent at home and abroad. Revolution and counter-revolution in Portugal before the Great War were seen by him; he was with the Italian JBxpeditionary Force which occupied Tripoli in 1911. and he attended the Coronation Durbar in Delhi. Other journalistic missions before the Great War included the first visit of King Edward to Berlin after bis accession: his first tour through Ireland after his accession, the wedding .of the Kaiser's daughter in the Palace at Berlin; funeral of King Christian of Denmark in Roskilde Cathedral: Olympic Games at Stockholm in 1912; the pursuit of Crippen, the murderer, from London to, Canada, and his return to England in custody. The Great War In 1914 Sir Percival spent six months in Ireland studying the Ulster question. He left Belfast two days before war was declared, travelled direct to Brussels, witnessed the mobilisation of the Belgian army and manning of frontier forts. He saw the first fighting in Belgium, and the landing of the British Expeditionary Forces in France, was with the Belgian field army until the fall of Antwerp, and then spent six months in Holland on a special mission. Sir Percival Phillips went to the Western Front in May, 1915. as one of the first five correspondents accredited to the British armies in France, and was the only one of the original five who remained in toe field throughout the war. He afterwards made a long tour of Palestine, Syria. and Turkcv On returning to England he joined the staff of the "Daily Mail." He was sent to Bagdad in September, 1922, to make an exhaustive enauiry into the British administration of Mesopotamia. He interviewed Signor Mussolini at Rome in December, 1922. and wrote the first detailed history of the Fascist movement. In January. 1923, he was attached to the French army which entered the Ruhr. He remained there for a year, with an interval in the autumn of 1923, when sent to Jugoslavia during the crisis on .the Fiume question. , • He was created a. Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by the French Government in 1919 for services in the war, and was knighted in 1920. Sir Percival was unmarried.