OR HADEN GUEST

Evening Star, Issue 19615, 22 July 1927, Page 5

OR HADEN GUEST

VISIT TO DOMINIONS STUDY OF EMPIRE PROBLEMS. Press Association—By Telegraph— Copyright. LONDON, July 21. Dr Haclen Guest leaves on Friday on a live months’ tour of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa to study Empire problems, giving special attention to Marketing Board matters and migration. Dr Leslie Haden Guest was elected Labor member in the English House of Commons for North Southwark in 1923, when he captured the seat from the Liberal sitting member, Mr E. A. Strauss. In 1918 he contested the Central Southwark seat, but was not successful. At the last general election ho was elected for North Southwark, but subsequently resigned from, the Labor Party, ami at the by-election that followed, consequent on The resignation of his &:oat ? he was defeated. Dr Guest was a civil surgeon in the South African War, and rendered valuable professional services in various capacities abroad during the Great War. In 19-0 he was secretary and physician to the Labor Delegation to oviet Russia and was later secretary to the Labor Party Commonwealth Group. During the war he acted as organiser of the big hospital in the Hotel Majestic in Paris, under the French Red Cross, and he also organised the military hospitals at Nevers, Limoges, and in other places. Dr Guest is the author _ of a number of works on political subjects,' devoting a great deal of his attention to international affairs, his opinions being expounded in ‘ Tho Struggle for i qwor in Europe,’ a book which has received a great deal of attention all over/the world. Most of his youth was passed in the grimy region of Hulme, Manchester, where his father practised medicine. The Dr Guest of that day was a Secularist and Republican, and his children listened to the conversation of visiting lefturers such as the late Herbert Burrows, Mrs Besant, Mr J, M. Robertson, and Mr G. W. Foote, and before ho was oighten the future M.P. was a declared Socialist. From the age of eighteen he became a weekend lecturer on Socialism, but when his father died he went to London, where he married, and completed his medical training at tho London Hospital. In 1900 he took his diplomas and went to South Africa. Two years later ho returned to London and became a specialist in the care and treatment of children, on which ho has now been engaged for a score of years •in the Southwark district. Dr Guest was the pioneer of the school clinic movement m London, which included the first dental clinic for school children. He received the Military Cross for rescuing wounded under fire at Passchcudaclo Ridge. When ho resigned from the Labor Paxty in February last, Dr Guest said that his immediate reason was the fundamental difference of opinion between himself and the party in regard to its policy on Chinn.