LORD ERNLE DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 60, 8 September 1937, Page 4

LORD ERNLE DEAD

WAR-TIME MINISTER

HIS WORK FOR AGRICULTURE

The • death has taken place at his home, Ginge Manor, Wantage (Berks), of Rowland Edmund Prothero, first Lord Ernie, who was President of the jioard of Agriculture from 1916 to 1919, and an author whose book "The Psalms in Human Life," published in 1903, had considerable vogue before the war, says the "Manchester Guardian."

He was born at Clifton-on-Teme in 1851 the third sou of the Rev. Canon Prothero, Rector of Whippingliarii, educated- at Maiiborbiigh and Balliol College, Oxford, and ..entered Parliament, for the first time in his sixtythird year. Two years later he joined the Government as President of the Board of Agriculture. Though the most striking success of his career thus came to Lord Srnle somewhat late in life,'his record would have remained one of some literary and academic distinction even with the political part of it left out. At Oxford, where he took a second-class in Moderations and a first, in Modern History, he was made a Fellow of All Souls, and his University, in 1914, returned him to the House of Commons. DID MUCH WRITING. Long before this event Mr. Prothero had .been called to the Bar, edited the "Quarterly Review" (from 1894 to 1899), served on a Royal Commission on Railways, and had written and published a large . number of literary works of a remarkably varied character—some dealing with agriculture and agriculturists, others with the lives and letters of different divines, historians, and poets, one a memoir, privately circulated, of Queen Victoria's soa-in-lawT Prince Henry of Battenberg,1 and another a revised edition, undertaken at the.Queen's own request, of a biography of Queen Victoria herself. He was engaged in controversy with Mr. Lloyd George on the land, question in 1910, and was dealt with by that statesman in characteristic fashion. But it was to his former antagonist that Mr. Lloyd George himself instinctively, turned when looking, in .1916, for a President of the Board of Agriculture! to cqmplete his new Government: In that position, the only* Ministerial post: he ever held, Mr. Prothero showed unusual and occasionally embarrassing candour in discussing the shortcomings! of those of his colleagues whom he had; occasion to suspect from time to time; of a lack of sympathy with his food-, production schemes; ■. ■ A CAUSE OF FRICTION. On the whole^ considered as makeshifts improvised for an emergency of pressing and peculiar danger, the Minister's methods achieved their purpose. Nevertheless they were provocative of so much friction within the Government and of so much dissatisfaction outside, particularly when the increasing pressure of the, war began to react to the disadvantage of the labour resources of the agricultural industry, that after the Armistice and the ensuing general election the genially outspoken Minister made no secret of his relief at getting rid ,of his depart-1 mental responsibilities and settling down to the ease and dignity of a peerage and an unofficial bench in the House of Lords. ' He was president of the English Association in 1921-22, and in 1935 the Duke of Kent, as president of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, presented to ..him the society's gold ■ medal; awarded for distinguished service to the farming industry. ■'■•'■- ■ ;^.V,'" > ;,:■:.-,.. :.'";■■» . ■■ , .; Mr. Lloyd George paid the following tribute to Lord Ernie:—"He was one of the most' valuable , Ministers: in ■ the group that helped to organise our resources during,the war: The increase, in food production, in spite, of the fact that a good deal of the agricultural labour had been Conscripted for the war, was entirely due.'to.;him and to Lord Lee. It was only two. days before that he. signed with a trembling hand a photograph for which I had asked him for my ' gallery of WaiMinisters. He w,as one of the most high-minded men I , have ever met in public life.?' ' '