LORD BIRKENHEAD’S RETIREMENT

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 84, 3 January 1929, Page 8

LORD BIRKENHEAD’S RETIREMENT

WHY HE ABANDONED OFFICE THE PENSION QUESTION Dominion Special Service. London, November 22. Mr. Lloyd George has told us how highly be valued Lord Birkenhead's counsel in the Cabinet. Lord Birkenhead was not at all loquacious or argumentative at Cabinet meetings, he generally remained more or less, silent and at the end of a discussion of some knotty point he produced a considered judgment wich weighed much with the Prime Minister. It is to be presumed that business magnates have heard something of this, and that is the reason why all sorts of companies appear to be anxious to have Lord Birkenhead on their boards. Already Lord Birkenhead has joined three companies with totally different businesses, and he will have to concern himself with chemicals, sugar, and gold. As he has explained to us so frankly his reasons for abandoning high political office, it may be suggested that Mr. Solly Joel's company, which is concerned with South African gold mines; will have first place in his affections. It is really difficult to see what active service Lord Birkenhead can render to the three concerns which he has already joined, and to those other businesses ■with which presumably he will shortly become associated. He has a great political and legal brain, but so far he has given no indication of a business ' and organising brain. When Sir Robert Horne, a lawyer, like Lord Birkenhead, left politics for business, he had already shown by his work during the war a great capacity for organisation and for the handling of staffs. Lord Birkenhead may have these qualifications latent, but as yet he has not displayed them, and possibly the shareholders of the companies concerned may want to know for what precisely they are paying Lord Birkenhead. Meanwhile he is not devoting himself entirely to business; his directorships apparently leave him free for journalism, and we shall find his articles appearing in various quarters. A Question of Pension. When he became Secretary of State for India, Lord Birkenhead ceased to draw his pension as an ex-Lord Chancellor, but now that he is no longer a Secretary of State he has started drawing again his pension as an exLord Chancellor. Ex-Lord Chancellors in receipt of pensions usually take a full part in the legal work of the House of Lords, and the pension thus really becomes remuneration for the discharge of duties as a judge in the highest court in the land. Lord Birkenhead, however, considers that the pension is in respect of past services and not of services “presently rendered.” It has been explained that Lord Birkenhead will only draw the pension during “the transition period from politics and the law to business.” How long that transition period will last no one can say, and apparently it is a matter to be decided entirely by Lord Birkenhead himself. It would also seem that if he tires of business and returns to public service he can start drawing the pension again. Altogether, the position does not seem to be very satisfactory, and Lord Birkenhead's prestige is certainly suffering. A Valuable Autograph. Lord Birkenhead’s good humour and good spirits, however, continue unabated, and he was telling the other day an excellent story against himself. He recently went down to the.Birkenhead Grammar School to present the prizes, and was inundated with requests from the boys for his autograph, to which he readily complied. . One small boy, to whom he had already given an autograph, asked for a second. Lord Birkenhead pleasantly signed a second time, but asked the boy what he wanted two autographs for. The small boy replied: “There’s a chap in my form who has got an autograph of Dixie Dean (the famous Everton footballer), and lie will only swop Dixie Dean for two of yours.”