OFFERED A THRONE

Evening Post, Issue 82, 6 April 1936, Page 9

OFFERED A THRONE

LATE LORD INCHCAPE

KINGDOM OF ALBANIA

"NOT IN MY LINE1'

Lord Inchcape's capacity for sweeping unnecessary affairs aside is revealed in the letters written to him and by him in the later years of his life. He accepted or dismissed plans put before him with decisive, short sentences (writes Hector Bolitho in the "Daily Telegraph").

Even when the Crown of Albania was offered to him in 1921 he did not pause to consider it' seriously, or even to ponder over the romantic possibilities of acceptance. The English representative of a big Balkan interests wrote to him: "I have been approached by official representatives of Albania, including the new Foreign Minister, and the very influential deputies, of the new Parliament, for Durazzo, Scutari, Valona, and the new capital of Tirana. ... "I am asked to inquire whether under any circumstances you would consider accepting the dignity of Kingship for Albania? Should the matter interest you your residence in the new kingdom would be at the Capital, Tirana, with a summer palace at Valona; and if your reply was in any way favourable a special secret meeting of the Albanian Parliament would take place, and an Ambassador would be sent over to London with an invitation couched in honourable and official language. "I do not know whether this is the first time in your career that you have been offered a kingdom. . . . "The majority-of the deputies in Albania are Moslem. The feelings towards Great Britain are very friendly; the tobacco monopoly is on the point of being sold to a British group, and an Anglo-Persian group are negotiating for the oil concessions." "A GREAT COMPLIMENT." The first news of the offer was sent by special messenger who travelled all the way from London to Lord Inchcape's Scottish estate, Glenapp. Lord Inchcape left his family at luncheon when- the man arrived, and returned to the table with the fantastic news, which was passed off as one of his little jokes. It was not until the letter arrived that he was believed. He replied concisely: "I duly received your letter of 29th ulto., and am sorry I have been so long in replying. It is a great compliment to be offered the Crown of Albania, but it is not in my line." "When his third daughter died Lord Inchcape gave to the country the considerable fortune which she would have inherited. He was splendid in the way he distributed his pounds, but he was canny in guarding pennies—which were not his own, but for the spending of which he considered himself responsible. His office economies were sometimes almost eccentric. At the end of the war he wrote to his agent at Colombo: "Your people use a good deal of seal-ing-wax on my letters.' I think we might do without it nowadays." When he was travelling on ■ the steamers of his fleet he would , nose into every cranny to devise ways of saving money. He once asked the steward to find out what had happened to an unused roll of butter which he had left on his early-morning tea-tray. These cheese-paring "methods which he adopted were possible in a great commercial enterprise1. But they were apparently impossible in the offices of ' the Government departments. Here was Lord Inchcape's old bugbear of the war years, still virulent and alive when the war was over. THE "AXE." He was almost too irritable and insistent in attacking the departments for the extravagant habits which had been bred in them during the extraordinary conditions of 1914-18. When a committee was formed in August of 1921 to wield the axe of economy in Whitehall Lord Inchcape's name was one of the first suggested as a supporter of Sir Eric Geddes, who was to be chairman. His annual speech as chairman of the P. and 0., now become one of the most important made in the City, included an attack upon the cost of education and oi Dr. Addison's housing schemes. There is a whimsical note in this use of his chairmanship to make a public declaration about the work of Sir Eric's committee. It was a clever way of getting over the ban put upon him while he was in conference, but his attack on public expenditure brought a horde of enemies about him. He was accused of being insensible to the promises made by the Government to the parents of men who were killed In the war. The sentimental aspect of the housing schemes was not as important to him as the financial. "I was arrested last August by ,the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer," he wrote, in June, after the report had appeared, "and sentenced to six months' hard labour on the Geddes Committee." The "hard labour" did not defeat him, nor did it deter him from, accepting an even ■ greater personal responsibility, in May of 1922, when he was asked to sail for India to preside over a Committee for Betrenchment, whose recommendations saved the Indian Government £8,000,----000, and brought the satisfaction of a balanced Budget. BEADING AND RAWLINSON. His Indian mission of retrenchment ■was to bring him into touch with two men for whom he had great admiration: The Viceroy, Lord. Reading, and the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kawlinson. Lord Inchcape had already expressed his pleasure over the appointment of Lord Beading, in a letter which he sent to Sir Harcourt Butler, then Governor of Burma. "I had a long and interesting talk with Beading the other day," he wrote. "He ijjs, of course, a man of outstanding ability and great experience, far and away from any Viceroy India has ever yet had, a man who will hold his own, and I am confident he will do well."

Lord Rawlinson presented a more alarming problem, for-Lord Inchcape's main economies were to affect the defences of India which he commanded. When he heard of the appointment of Lord Inchcape's committee he greeted She plan to stabilise the country's finances. He had just "fought like a tiger to resist further cuts in the army to balance the additional cost on the frontier." All this, he said, was "very wearing" and "rather futile," but when he heard that Lord Inchcape was sailing for India he admitted that "the whole position of Indian finance" needed revising. ■"I shall, therefore, welcome the arrival of Inchcape, who is coming out to run a sort of Geddes Committee for India. A man of his financial experience must see that India's credit depends, first and foremost, upon security, and that credit is what India most wants; first, to tide her over her financial difficulties, which I believe are only temporary; and, secondly, to develop her resources, which are almost limitless. We'take pride in the canals we have dug, the mines we have developed, the railways.we have built, and the education we have provided; but, as Clemenceau said when he was

out here last year, we have only yet touched the fringe of development."

THE NEW DELHI.

It was fortunate that one of the first subjects discussed by Lord Rawlinson and Lord Inchcape, apart from the actual business of the committee, was the building of Delhi. Lord Eawlinson had written in . July: "When I come away from meetings of Council after fighting for a little money to provide for India's security, and I pass the huge palace which is being built for the Viceroy, I am tempted to curse and swear." Lord Inchcape agreed that the building of the now capital was a monstrous extravagance. They found, too, from.the beginning, that they were able to share the privilege of frankness.

Lord Inchcape was so impressed by Lord Bawlinson's arguments against economy on the North-West Frontier that he made the journey to Waziristan himself. He spent many hours with Sir John Maffey, who was then in charge, and was wholly convinced of the dangers that would threaten if his economies were allowed to interfere with frontier defences.

"India cannot afford to 'do without men like Maffey," he wrote to Lord Beading. "I understand he is going on. leave in July. I think it would be a misfortune if he did not return. I hope he will. It may be thought that Maffey has mesmerised me. Perhaps he has. If so, all the Frontier officers have done the same. They are marvels."

Lord Inchcape returned to England at the end of his mission. Telegrams and speeches had already allowed him to feel the glow of his last public success. The Secretary of State telegraphed: "It is difficult to find words in which, as we hear on all sides, this formidable inquiry has been handled by you." But a note of disappointment comes into the end of the story. AWARDED A VISCOUNTCY. There is not one letter in the most private of his correspondence to show that Lord Inchcape had ever angled for honours. Indeed, an examination of his story shows him to have been careless of them up to now. But for some reason which is not described in any of his papers his friends expected him to receive an earldom in recognition of his work in India. The Prime Minister and Lord Peel saw the reward for his services within the limits of a viscountcy. Lord Inchcape wrote to Lord Peel, on April 18, 1923, after he had been asked to supply a list of his services to the Government: , "I hate doing it, but as you asked me to let you have it, I enclose a list of my public services since I was made a peer in 1911, after having served on the India Council for just under 15 years. ... I have not asked for any reward or honour all through my life . . . it was only when Beading suggested the single remove that I said I did not want it but would appreciate the double. I gave him my reasons just as I gave them to you the other night. "But please understand I do not ask for it. If it comes along, as I told you, I would be gratified. If it does not, I shall never breathe a word of complaint or say that I refused the first remove. It has been an immense source of pleasure and gratification to me' to know that I have carried through this last piece of work to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State, the Viceroy, and the people of India, and I feel myself already rewarded. ... If you think you will have any difficulty, please Go not trouble. The last thing I want to do is to bother my friends." On June 7 Lord Inchcape went to see Mr. Baldwin. A letter which he wrote to Lord Beading a few days afterwards outlines the conversation. "Baldwin asked me-to go and see him last Thursday," he wrote, "and after talking over many matters, amongst them McKenna's Chancellorship (of the Exchequer), which I said was, in my opinion, a master stroke, he mentioned the double remove and the difficulties attached thereto. He asked me if I would take a P.C., or a Viscountcy instead, and I said 'No.' He replied, 'I thought you wouldn't. ..." That, no doubt, is the end of it; and I shall content myself with the spectacle case which Erleigh (the present Ma/guess of Beading) sent me from you, marked with four balls and an T below. Every time I draw my glasses from the case, I shall be reminded of you and all your kindness."

There is no record of the conversations which must have followed the interview with Mr. Baldwin. In January of the new year.Lord Inchcape accepted his viscountcy. He was raised to an earldom in 1929.