NO. 10, DOWNING STREET

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 February 1917, Page 8

NO. 10, DOWNING STREET

A HOUSE OF POIRUCAJ, SECRETS

More than one distinguished visitor has expressed his astomsmneut at uw dinginess of the Premiers othcial icsi. dence—?lo, Downing Street. Walpole himself would not accept it from George Ji. as a gift, and Lord Salisbury never occupied tiie place a.-; a home. On tlio other hand, the great Pitt “felt at home” there, and built the famous dining-room in which the successive First Lords have given Ministerial banquets before the opening of Parliament. It was. Pitt’s'pride, during long years of statesmanship, that he never slept a single night outside the panelled rooms of No. 10, which he loved better than any place the girl-Queen could offer him, Lord North wah so attached to the haunted corridors that lie went in and sat down at the ancient dealt when he was not First Lord at all, to the astonishment of secretaries and to his Ford, ship’s own confusion. iicaconsfield spent £3OOO decorating the reception-rooms upstairs. It is on the ground floor of No. 10’that the Cabinet Chamber of the British Empire ,is situated. It is guarded by massive double doors, double windows and and has but one record of excited intrusion, when a minor official crashed in upon the amazed Ministers with the news of the fall of Sebastopol. His good news excused ' his unprecedented lapse, "x.