LATE LORD STANLEY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 127, 25 November 1938, Page 18

LATE LORD STANLEY

MAN OF GREAT CHARM

WAR AND POLITICS

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, October 17

At the early age of 44, Lord Stanley elder son of the Earl of Derby and Secretary of State for the Dominions, died in a London nursing home yesterday. Lady Stanley, who happens to be in the same nursing home with a broken ankle, was wheeled in to her husband's room when it became apparent that the end was near, and was with him when he passed away. It is said that he suffered from a rare and mysterious form of tuberculosis. Widespread sympathy is expressed for the Earl and Countess of Derby. The King and Queen at once sent a message of deep sympathy to Lady Stanley. Lord Stanley was a particular friend of theirs. One of Lord Stanley's contemporaries at Magdalen College, Oxford, was the Duke of Windsor. ' On August 16 Lord Stanley left for Canada to open the Diamond Jubilee Session of the largest National Exhibition in the world—the Canadian Na- 1 tional Exhibition at Toronto. At that time he was limping slightly and walking with a stick,, it being stated that he had twisted a leg muscle while playing golf. Aften opening the exhibition, Lord and Lady Stanley, with their two younger sons, were enjoying a Canadian holiday. Their plans included visits to Lake Louise, Jasper Park, and other parts of the Rocky Mountains. At Banff, however, Lord Stanley had a recurrence of his leg trouble and, after resting there, cancelled the rest of his holiday tour and an official visit" to Newfoundland, where economic and financial problems awaited his consideration, which was to.have followed. RETURN TO LONDON. He arrived in Winnipeg on September 18 and went into hospital the same night. After treatment there he was pronounced fit for travel but, on arrival at Southampton on September 25, he was carried ashore on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to the nursing home in London. Not long afterwards it became known that Lord Stanley's illness must be regarded as more serious than had been at first supposed. For some years his general health had given rise to periodic anxiety. In 1932 he had to cancel engagements owing to a slight operation. In June, 1937, it was stated that he had been suffering for some time from septic rheumatism, and in July of the same year he underwent an abdominal operation. His heir is the Hon. Edward John Stanley, probation-officer of the Grenadier Guards, who will come of age next April. Lord Derby is the first Englishman to have lived to see two of his sons in the British Cabinet—the one Dominions Secretary and the other, Mr. Oliver Stanley, President of the Board of Trade. . "Most people are proud of, their sons," Lord Derby told the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce last year. T am proud of mine." Edward Montague Cavendish Stanley inherited the genial temperament of his father, and in both statesmanship and sporstmanship exemplified the great traditions which England expects of a member of the Derby family Unaffected and able, he was marked out as one of the most gifted "young men" in the National Government. He succeeded Mr. Malcolm MacDonald as Dominions Secretary in May Lord Stanley, who won the Military Cross and the Italian Croce di Guerra in the war, entered Parliament in 1917, when barely 23. On one occasion during the war, at the head of a column of riderless horses, he bluffed three enemy officers and 106 men into surrender. . , His subsequent political career included posts as deputy chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party, Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, Under-Secre-tary for the Dominions, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for India and Burma. To the time of his death he was president of the Junior Imperial League and president of the Lancashire County Cricket Club. He shared his father's love of racing, was a fine horseman, a first-class shot, and a member of the Jockey Club and National Hunt Committee. Quashed was the most notable horse to carry his colours. This filly won the Oaks in 1935 and the Ascot Gold Cup in the following year. Quashed also won the Jockey Club Cup in 1935, and completed a "double" by winning the same event in 1936. Lord Stanley did not race on an extensive scale. He had a few horses in training at Newmarket and at Lambourn. Lord Stanley had no enemies. He had fixed opinions and expressed them freely. Yet everyone spoke well of him and thought well of him too. Contact and conversation with him were a pleasure and a delight. His relationship with Lord Derby was the ideal one between father and son, based on mutual respect and deep affection.