OBITUARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15325, 11 June 1913, Page 7

OBITUARY.

LATE MR. GEORGE WYNDHAM. "THE SMILING ASSASSINS EX-IRISH CHIEF SECRETARY. TRIBUTE FROM PREMIER. By Telegraph.—Copyright. London, June 10. Mr. George Wyndham (Unionist M.P. for Dover) and formerly Chief Secretary for Ireland) died suddenly from heart failure in Paris to-day. In the House of Commons to-day Mr. Asquith paid a warm tribute to the deceased. ,'■..- MB. WFNDHAM'S CAREER.. The late Mr. Wyndham was born in, London in 1863. Coming of a race of politicians, he found the Parliamentary path I opened before him. But at first he sought to see life, and. joined the Coldstream Guards as a stripling just out of his teens. Before he was is2 he had faced the perils of war, having fought with the Suakin expedition, and won medal and. star. He was only 24 when he became private secretary to Mr. Balfour in Ireland. The next year he was elected to Parliament for Dover, and he represented that constituency till his death. .'-',■'- Like many another gifted and ambitious man, he was disappointed to find that the House of Commons was not eager to listen to him. An agreeable voice, scholarly and well-informed if rather florid oratory, polished periods, perorations, and apt allussions from the classics do not catch the ear of Parliament. Mr. Wyndham took his rebuff quietly, and' waited. His chance came one night when Cecil Rhodes was under the Radical harrow, and a speech made on the spur of the moment, full of fire and earnestness, captured attention. The success was repeated, and improved upon. When Lord Salisbury formed his Ministry in 1895, the young politician was forgotten, but the many changes three years later paved the way for his advancement, and he became Chief Secretary for Ireland with a seat in the Cabinet in the Balfour Government at the age of 39. In this position his unfailing good humour made him great friends with the Nationalists, who styled him "The Smiling Assassin," just as they spoke of " Buckshot Forster," and "Bloody Balfour," his predecessors,in the office. " During the South African war, the Wyndham was Under-Secretary for War, then beginning to be the most unpopular office in the State. It has since easily displaced Dublin Castle from this unenviable pre-eminence. Mr. Wyndham was often hard put to it to justify the blunders of his Department to an angry House of Commons. Many a night he would rise in a House seething with indignation over disasters and exposures of inadequate preparations, and one could imagine the most experienced Minister failing in the task of justification. But the Under-Secretary had a talent for persuasion, the gift of setting disagreeable facts in the best light, of finding crumbs of comfort in disaster, and on several occasions he turned aside the wrath of Parliament, and saved his party from defeat.. Mr. Wyndham resigned his seat in the Cabinet in 1905, and since that date he had taken little active part in politics, his health being far from the best. ' In 1902 he was chosen Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and in 1908 he acted in a similar capacity for Edinburgh University. His death creates a 'vacancy for Dover, where the deceased was re-elected on the* last occasion unopposed.