DOMINIONS SECRETARY

Evening Star, Issue 19616, 23 July 1927, Page 10

DOMINIONS SECRETARY

m mm leaves lohdoh frees Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, July 22. ’(Received July 23, at 10 a.m.) (After forty-five minutes’ handshaking r party headed by the Lord Mayor’ find members of Parliament cheered Mr L. S. Ainery as ho departed from Waterloo for Southampton to embark on his tour of the dominions. —A. and N.Z. and ‘Sun’ Cable. The Right Hon. Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett x\mery has had rather a meteoric career, and his rise to a position that allows him to sway the destinies of the British Empire as Secretary of State for the Dominions has been so sudden that it is not surprising that people' are not quite able to understand his progress. Mr Ainery was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, and afterwards was a member of the editorial staff of ‘ The Times ’ for ten years. He was chiefly connected with the colonial department of that paper, but was an ardent tariff reformer, and his energies were eventually diverted to a history of the South African War. ,At first , a barrister, he became a solicitor on leaving ‘ Tho Times ’ in 1909, but soon abandoned the law for Parliament. Ho was elected to the House of Commons in 1911, and has sat with hiit little intermsision ever since. During the Great War he was made Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet in 1917, and it used to be said that he and Sir Maurice Hankoy knew more official war secrets than any other two men in tho country. After serving as Under-Secretary in tho Colonial Office and in the Admiralty, the late Mr Bonar Law placed him in .the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1922, within eleven years of fits first entry into Parliament. His principal exploit as First Lord (said a London paper) was to cause to be published a document meant to destroy the findings of the Geddes Committee on Naval Expenditure, for Mr Amery is the most reckless political spendthrift in the Cabinet. It was he who forced the Singapore base upon the British Parliament, and it is also stated that his policy of Empire preference brought about Mr Baldwin’s crushing dcfeat_ at the, polls, resulting in Labor taking office. “Mr Amery is more English than the English,” wrote Lovat Fraser, in the ‘Daily Mail,’ a couple of years ago, “ and he is the most conspicuous example of Imperialistic megalomania we possess. Ho does not reveal the smallest induct of economy in tho handling of the taxpayers’ money, while ho has probably the most untrustworthy judgment of any politician of our time.” In explaining his success, Mr Fraser says that he carries all before him in tho Cabinet because he works “.while most of the other Ministers do not work much.” He is very short, very pugnacious, and he has a fearless courage coupled with great driving power.