In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1938, Page 25

In the Public Eye

Earl de la Warr, who considers the j shadow of the recent crisis to be upon j us still, became Lord Privy Seal in Mr. Chamberlain's new Ministry last year. He was born in 1900 and educated at Eton. He served with the Navy during the Great War, being engaged in mine-sweeping, and at that time was already an earl, for he had succeeded his father at the age j of fifteen. He married in 1920, and has two sons and one daughter. He first entered the front rank in politics in 1929 when he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the War Office. Later he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, but in the crisis of 1931 he left the Labour Party, stating that he would not continue to sit on the Opposition bench because of the attitude over the economy proposals which he described as "merely negative." He refused to oppose the policy of the new Government, and was given another under-secretary's post, am June, 1936, he became a Privy Councillor, and with changes in the Ministry became, Under-Secretary for the Colonies. The title which he holds is very old, going back for over seven hundred years. There was a Baron Warr in 1209, a Baron West in 1342, and a Viscount Cantelupe in 1761. The title of Baron of Buckhurst, now assumed by his eldest son, goes back to 1864. Mr. Hugh Hunt. An Englishman will produce the sixteen famous Irish plays to be staged at Dublin's Abbey Theatre during the National Drama Festival. He is Mr. Hugh Hunt, the ex-presi-dent of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, who has been in charge of productions at the Abbey Theatre since 1935. . . . Mr. Hunt has taken his Irish appointment seriously. So deeply has he buried himself in the Irish tradition that now he is writing plays himself, as well as producing them, for Ireland's State-subsidised National Theatre. He has already staged one of his own plays there. This was "The Invincibles," an account of the Phoenix Park assassinations, which he wrote in colloboration with Frank O'Connor, the Dublin novelist. Mr. Hunt's chief assistant at the Abbey is also non-Gaelic. Most of the settings and costumes are designed by Miss Tanya, Moiseiwitsch, daughter of Mr. Benno Moiseiwitsch, the pianist. Her father returned to London from his latest concert tour recently. His homecoming was a sad one, for he had only just been allowed to hear the news that his brother, Mr. John Moiseiwitsch. died in England four weeks previously. His death was not announced, as Mr. Moiseiwitsch's family feared that he might read Oi it in South Africa, before going on to the concert platform. The news was broken .to him just before he sailed from Rio. Mr. John Moiseiwitsch, who went to London some thirty-five years ago from Odessa, was an engineer. Mr. Bernard Shaw. Mr. Bernard Shaw's own description of his thoughts while facing death by drowning are contained in "Robert Loraine," a biography of the famous actor, by his widow, Winifred Loraine. In 1908, while Loraine was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Shaw at Llanbedr, Wales, he and Shaw went swimming in a very rough sea. Only after a prolonged struggle did they succeed in returning, exhausted, to land. "We lay gasping for some time," wrote Loraine in his diary, "When we recovered our breath Shaw said, very coolly, 'That was a near thing, 1 and went off to fetch his sandshoes. . . . "I asked him whether visions of his past life had come before him, as they say the drowning have them. He shook his head. . . . 'Did you think of God, or Hell, or Heaven?'" Mr. Shaw has himself interpolated the following passage.' "No, a man does not think of fairy tales within two minutes, of certain death. I thought of nothing but pressing practical things. First I wanted to tell you not to try to swim to shore, as it was no use and the effort would exhaust you. ... I considered whether the people there could help us if we sang. out. But there were no fishermen there; only trippers, who would have upset a boat if they had tried to launch it.

"Then I thought of Charlotte (Mrs. Shaw) getting the news that I was drowned, and how I had not altered my will, and how she would never be able to understand my arrangements with my translaters.

"Then 1 saw you were having a hard time when the big waves came, and thought of what a pity it was that you should be lost in the strength of your youth with the world before you, and that 1 didn't matter,, as I had shot my bolt and done ray work.

"Then I asked myself how many more strokes I could swim before the effort became too great, and I bad rather drown than try any more. Then my foot struck a stone, and instead of saying 'Thank God!' I said 'Damn!'

"Then came a really awful moment. When I got on my legs you had vanished. It was my clear duty to dive after you and rescue you. I could not go home without you and say I had left you to drown.

"And then came the frightful humiliation of realising that I was utterly incapable of swimming another stroke 1 had reached my limit. And then I found that you were standing close behind me. But, by Gad, it took the conceit out of me."

Loraine's was a fantastic career. A temperament which could enable a man to be so successful an actor as to make a fortune of £40,000 out of "Man and Superman" in New York, play Cyrano de Bergerac after the war with only one lung, one kneecap, and a huge false nose that blocked his breathing, and also figure as one of the most devil-may-care of aviation pioneers, is rare indeed.

Baron Franz yon Papen, the former German Chancellor, who succeeded Dr. Bruening in that post and latterly was German Ambassador in Vienna, is now reported to be retiring from the diplomatic service. He was an attache at the German Embassy in the United States when the Great War broke out. In his activities against the Allies, Baron yon Papen was associated with the famous Captain Boy-Ed, the naval attache, Dr. Albert, chancellor of the Embassy, and Captain Paul Koenig, who negotiated the submarine Deutschland to the United States. All these men worked under Count Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. They were connected with many plots for fomenting rebellion in India and Ire^ land, and in 1917 yon Papen was implicated in an alleged conspiracy to introduce incendiary bombs upon Allied and neutral liners at sea, being publicly charged with this offence by the United States Government. Fortyone cases of fires breaking out on ships at sea were listed in an indictment endorsed by a Federal grand jury. One of the charges laid against him was attempting to blow up the Welland Canal. He was expelled from the United States and started to return to Germany through Sweden. But though the strength of the British cordon had been pointed out to him, his friends made him carry many confidential documents. At Falmouth the ship was thoroughly searched, and yon Papen was discovered, while the activities of German agents in neutral countries were revealed by the documents found in his possession. Yon Papen was born in Westphalia. He served in the Regiment of Uhlans, and after the war joined the Centre (Catholic) Party, being elected a deputy in the Prussian Diet in 1921. He was forced by his own party to resign his seat, however, as the result of his absence at a critical division of the Diet. He was Chancellor just before Hitler, served under' him as Vice-Chan-cellor, and became Ambassador to Vienna in July, 1934. Mr. Eobert Brennan. Mr. Robert Brennan, who has been appointed Minister for Ireland at Washington, was condemned to death twenty-two years ago by the British authorities for the part he played in the Easter Rebellion. He will now have the pleasure of presenting credentials signed by King George to the White House. The credentials will be more than normally an official formality. Mr. Brennan has been secretary of the Irish Legation at Washington for the past four years under Mr. M. Mac White, whose appointment to Rome left to United States without an Irish Ministw for five months. Mr. Brennan's talents, apart from diplomacy, are chiefly literary, and considerable enough to have made so shrewd a judge -as the late George Russell deplore the fact that he had given so much time to politics and so little to letters. He has written plays, prose-poems, and detective stories which have enjoyed some popularity in his native land. , One of Mr. Brennan's plays, which has been performed in English and Irish, deals light-heartedly with an event which was taken very seriously in its day— the theft of the Cr-own Jewels from Dublin Castle on the eve of a visit by King Edward VII. The "outrage". was at first believed to be the prelude to an organised series of disturbances by extremists, and it was freely conjectured that it provoked the dismissal of one high official. Rumour also coupled the name of a member of the Lord Lieutenant's household with the crime. But not even a Royal Commission of Inquiry— enlivened by the presence of the late Tim Healy at counsel's table—nor a search of all the pawnshops in the European capitals, recovered the missing jewels. Sir Wilfrid Woods. Lawyers who returned to St. John's recently from the circuit court at Bonne Bay on the west coast of Newfoundland, described a remarkable incident in which Sir Wilfrid Woods, a member of the Commission of Government of Newfoundland, was held up for 36 hours. A mob of unemployed is stated to have seized and attempted to beach the steamer in which he was making a tour. Sir Wilfrid addressed a meeting of 200 men at Bonne Bay and was asked what he could offer to relieve distress. He is reported to have replied that he could only offer a continuation of unemployment relief. The men replied, "That means we continue to half-starve on the dole." Some of them threatened to give the Commissioner a taste of the diet which was issued to the unemployed. An attempt was then made by a party of men to seize the steamer Shulamite, in which Sir Wilfrid was travelling. The men tried to beach the ship, but the captain cut the moorings and steamed off with six ringleaders aboard. Sir Wilfrid then found accommodation in a local house. The Shulamite made her way towards Cornerbrook. She met the steamer Argyle, in which a local Magistrate was travelling. He ordered the Shulamite's captain to go on to Cornerbrook to get police help, while he continued to Bonne Bay to intervene for Sir Wilfrid. His services were not needed. Sir Wilfrid had not been molested and was able to resume his tour after a day and a half. Sir Wilfrid Wentworth Woods, who has served over 30 years in the colonies, was appointed to his present post in December, 1936. He was chairman of the Commission which investigated Mvi Tsai, the Chinese system of semi-slavery, in Hong Kong and , Malaya.