NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY Registered for transmission through the post as a newspaper. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1925. OXFORD AND ASQUITH.

Northern Advocate, 7 February 1925, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY Registered for transmission through the post as a newspaper. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1925. OXFORD AND ASQUITH.

V' Lord Asquith's Choice of a name for. his new peerage is a very happy one, for as the Earl of Oxford and Asquith he is able to revive a great title and also to preserve a great name, which would have been lost of he had become merely. ,Earl of Oxford. In conferring a peerage upon the gentleman who for so many years has been the leader of the British Liberals the King has gone away from tradition, for the transaction has been a personal , one between His Majesty and the subject whom he has chosen to honour. This was by no means the first time that Mr Asquith Lhad been asked to accept a title, and | perhaps he. would not .have accepted it |if the King had not pressed him on ! personal .grounds to do so. Mr Gladstone thought, that it was a questioni able elevation, to "exchange a distinguished surname for an undistinguished peerage, "i and another .Commoner once | remarked that '' many can be earls, but ! few can be Talbots." Mr Asquith may | have shared these views, and if he did ihe has very skilfully avoided the submersion of his own 'honoured surname into that of Oxford. The peerage was, [ of course, the only means by which His I Majesty could demonstrate his esteem j for a subject who has already won the highest honours. Born in Yorkshire, in 1852, a Privy Councillor at forty, a distinguished scholar and lawyer long before polities claimed him, the recipient of innumerable academic degrees—he Lis LL.D. or D.C.L. of no fewer than

seven universities —statesman, man of i letters, and orator, Henry Herbert As- j quith, Earl of Oxford and Asquith, has j , had: a life full of honours. 'To his deSire to'mark liis regard for so good a citizen His Majesty has . added, a wish to mark a personal friendship of many years, and" in doing' so has honoured himself as well as his faithful counsellor. It is, however, a curious turn of j the wheel of time that has given the, I House of Peers its newest member. Not .only-was it during his. Administration in the : war years, and during the subsequent Coalition Ministry of which he , was a member, that the disposal of j "honours" created much scandal; but j Mr Asquith himself condemned the i peerage in strong terms. Now he is ! constrained to enter the peerage. We I can suppose that he would have been j reluctant to place himself in what may^

appear to be an invidious position, weia it not that there can be no sting in aa offer made by the King himscll. not b\ a party politician. There <:ni be no comparison between the purchased "honours" of the bad years and the title that now crowns the career of one who must take rank among Britain's great statesmen. Opinions formed during more recent years should not be permitted to.blind us to + hc reality of his claim to greatness. However much room there may be for dispute as to the methods which he adopted during the later war period, there can be none as to the firmness and dignity —we may even say the nobility —of • his bearing at the crucial moment when the call came to the nation that he led. His conduct and that of his great Foreign Minister, Earl Grey, won from every party and every people an admiration which the years of the shadows, even if they have clouded it, have not dispelled. His later "wait and see" method was surely uncharacteristic of the statesman who confronted an awful responsibility with true greatness, and with unhesitating bravery shouldered a task that must have appeared to the stoutest mind well-nigh impossible. Whatever his faults and his failings, Mr Asquith made history, and it is matter for congratulation that the name to which he has brought honour is not to be forgotten. As Earl of Oxford he has succeeded to a great title, held by celebrated personalities of the the past. Perhaps the most celebrated was Robert Harley, the last of the Lord High Treasurers of England, who is best remembered as a scholar and a friend of scholars rather than a politician who changed from Whig to Tory. Before through the centuries the great family of the De Veres, distinguished men as were the Harleys, had held the title. Great and full of honours as they were, none gained the title with more honour nor held it with more dignity than will the Earl of Oxford and Asquith.