VISCOUNT BURNHAM

Evening Star, Issue 21469, 21 July 1933, Page 7

VISCOUNT BURNHAM

DIED IN HIS SLEEP NEWSPAPERMAN AND POLITICIAN Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, July 20.. Viscount Burnham died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Bryanstou square. He attended a meeting of the Indian Committee on July 18, and was apparently in excellent health. OUTSTANDING CAREER Of all the men who adorned the newspaper world, not one rendered more valuable assistance than Viscount Burnham. Lord Burnham belonged to a family that built up its fortunes entirely on newspaper enterprise. His grandfather published _the first penny newspaper, the London ‘ Daily Telegraph,’ while his father, the first Baron Burnham, has been given the credit for introducing that vital element of the modern newspaper—“ human interest.” With the profession of journalism in his blood, as it were. Viscount Burnham was educated deliberately as newspaperman and politician. He passed from Eton to Balliol College, Oxford, and was still an undergraduate there when he married Olive, second daughter of General Sir Henry de Bathe. After that his first ambition was to enter Parliament, which was soon achieved, and at the early age of twenty-two he was elected to the House of Commons for West St. Pancras. That was in 1884. Ever since then Viscount Burnham was on Britain’s stage—an intensely living figure, not merely talking and criticising, but doing things. He was chairman and president of a vast number of commissions and committees that have dealt with a variety of vital national problems—Local Government Reform, Soldiers’ Resettlement (their restoration to civil life after the war), Empire Settlement, Teachers’ Salaries —and a host of minor questions, each one of which in turn occupied the attention of his keen brain. He did valuable work on the London County Council, on which he sat for about ten years. Always interested in military affairs, he served in the Bucks Yeomanry from 1883 to 1913, and commanded it for the last eleven years of his service. Almost immediately on the commencement of the war he joined up again, and was given command, of the Second Reserve Regiment, which he trained from 1915 to 1917. His main interests were, of course, bound up with the ‘ Daily Telegraph,' but he widely concerned himself with Press affairs in general. He succeeded his father as president of the Newspaper Press Fund and the Newsvendors’ Benevolent Institution. In 1919 he was president of the Institute of Journalists, of which his father had been the second, president in 1882. From its inception ho had been chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, which is the business organisation of the metropolitan Press, and during the war he was chairman of the Press Conference, which had consigned to it most responsible duties ,in the regulation of news and the promotion of national interests.

In 1921 Lord Burnham was unanimously elected President of the International Labour Conference of the League of Nations at Geneva. ' This was in reality the first regular conference ever summoned, as the inaugural Congress at Washington was more or less experimental, and the second at Genoa had been confined solely to shipping. He was re-elected in 1922, and these two conferences may be termed the /organic sessions of the International Labour Organisation, which was then put on secure foundations. Lord Burnham had always held that its principal function was to mould public opinion throughout the world to humane principles of industrial production, ensuring both efficiency of output and contentment among the workers. Besides this, he held a good many civic and local offices.

A friend who knew Viscount Burnham well said of him: “Next to the Prince of Wales, there was no better ambassador of Empire. He was a perfect chairman of committee, and a delightfully genial fellow. No work was too much for him to undertake, and if he gave his promise -to see a thing through it was certain to go through. He had ever a kind heart, and he was a very loyal friend. He had so many important activities and interests, and was so much in demand for functions that count, and conferences of wide-reaching moment, that his friends marvelled how he survived all his various engagements.”

In 1917 Lord Burnham was ■ created a Companion of Honour of the British Empire on the institution of the order, and he received many decorations from foreign. Powers. He had the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold IT. of Belgium, and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Redeemer of Greece. He was a Grand Officer of the Crown ’of Italy, and the Star of Rumania. He was Commander of the Legion' of Honour and of the Order of Leopold.- He was an M.A. of Oxford University, LL.D of Cambridge University, LL.D. of Mac Gill University, Montreal, and D. Litt. of Durham. Besides that, during 1924, on the occasion of the Byron centenary celebrations, he was an LL.D of the University of Athens, and an honorary citizen of the City of Athens. He was president of the Empire Press Union from 1926 to 1928, and president of the Imperial Press Conferences at Ottawa in 1920, and Melbourne in 1925. He was seventy years of age.