VISCOUNT SIMON

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20253, 22 May 1940, Page 7

VISCOUNT SIMON

CHANCELLOR’S TITLE LONG PUBLIC SERVICE (Reed. May 22, 9 a.m.) LONDON, May 21. Sir John Simon, the Lord Chancellor, has taken the title Viscount Simon of Stackpole and Elidor in' the county of Pembroke. Viscount Simon, who. stoutly defended the Munich Agreement, was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Mr. Neville Chamberlain’s Cabinet from' May 1937 until Mr. Chamberlain’s resignation last week 'in favour of Mr. Winston Churchill, in whose Ministry Lord Simon became the Lord Chancellor. One of the greatest King’s Counsel in Britain’s legal history, Lord Simon made a fortune at the Bar before the Great War. His peak year was reputed to be £60,000. He was opposed to England’s entry into the Great War until the invasion of Belgium convinced him of the justice of England’s cause. He resigned from the Cabinet later on; however, because he could not agree to the introduction of conscription. He entered

politics as a Liberal, and when Mr. Lloyd George destroyed the Liberal Party he became leader of what were known as the Simon Liberals, to distinguish them from other brands of Liberals.

After attending Oxford, where he was a scholar of Wadham College, and a president of the Oxford Union Society, Lord Simon was called to the Bar in 1899. He was elected as a Libera] member of Parliament for Walthamstoed (Essex), in 1906, and became Solicitor-General in 1910 and Attorney-General, with a seat in the Cabinet in 1913. Other Cabinet posts he has held are Home Secretary (1915-16) and Foreign Secretary (1931-35). He was a member of the Roval Commission on the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (1921), leading counsel for Newfoundland in the Labrador Boundary Reference (1926), chairman of the Indian Statutory Commission (1927-30), and chairman of the inquiry into the RlOl disaster.

The son of a Congregational minister he was created a knight in 1910, K.C.V.0., in 1911 and G.C.V.O. in 1937. He is 67 years of ag®.