OBITUARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16916, 31 January 1917, Page 6

OBITUARY

LORD CROMER. Presa Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. Router's Telegrams. LONDON, January 30. (Received Jan. 30, at 8.55 p.m.) Lord Cramer is dead. Router's Telegrams. LONDON, January 30. (Received Jan. iO, at 11.30 p.in.) • Lord Cromer was ill for some time, and was unable latterly to preside At the meetr uvgs o£ the Dardanelles Commission, lie uied from a stroke late last jiight.

Tho main chapter in tho life of Evelyn ■Baring, Earl Ciomor, is practically tlio history oi the modern regeneration of Ancient Jigypt. His first connection with Egypt was in ia76, when, at the. a-ge of oS, having just boon gazetted major iu tho Royal Artillery, ho was appointed. British. Commissioner of tho _ Egyptifin Public Debt Olhce. Major Baring had hitherto been chiefly employed in a non-military capacity. He had acted as eccretary to tho Uoyernor of the lonian isles and afterwards in tho inquiry into tho Jamaica disturbances in 1865; and from lord to 1876 had'served as private secretary to hie cousin, Lord Northbrook during- his Indian Viceroyalty. But he had given no marked promise of administrative talent and his appointment as tho British representative ot an international board of financial experts was looked , ,:i as an experiment that could only justly itself by extraordinary success, and, even eo, as constitutI £ff a precedent not lightly to bo followed, ii u* appointment was not many months old before he had displayed a" grip of Egyptian administrative affairs, apart from a special in finance, which more than justified tho experiment, and made the question of precedent of little account L£ss than three years alter his arrival in Uairo Major Baring became British Con-troller-general, with M. Biignieres as his colleague m tho representation of tho Dual Control. But within a year he was back in India again, where Lord Ripon wanted a A S t i » nancml member of his Council lhe Afghanistan campaign was over, but it had left a legacy of troublesome questions, and Major Barmg, a 6 Lord Ripon knew favoured the evacuation of Kandahar and M?- rt DO R "d™? 3 * , ! of forward policy. Major Baring's three years' work in India left its mark for good on the finances of kJosT y, and was rewarded b y •**» had nat b« en ,» ol]od bot , w f ™» «» ?A \ PO . SO and »ccupDration at srfT h t-sin,frfe/sfs 1° Aj h ™ ,°>»«~J «o tie Oo.SZS? eWirS? ' that , any at tompt at that ° «»saniM a Goviranort that w£ W Dy tho British Government, was appointed • foe stipulation that no financial™™ could be undertaken without his eoSent to some extent regularised the British surveil lance, and certainly gave a degree of freedom of action without which any financial reforms would have been well-nigh i^ +l, Th A C i nine 7 ™ :ll . ions sufficient to pay the Alexandrian indemnities, to wipe out the dchcite of the precedins -yeans to g?ve thl ' Nyptian Treasury a working balance of halt a. million, and to leave a million over S, S,r Ev^ n Barin * courageously de! i cided to invest at once in irrigation works- ' an investment which brought m a return too big to calculate, and certainly laid the oundation for aU the prosperity that faU lowed. r lhe land was the only source of revenue, and Sir Kvelyn realised that neither relief from taxation nor any increase in revenue was possible until and unless the land was made able to bear its burden It was a bold stroke to invest a million in this enterprise out of the slender resources of the country, for the 1885 convention provided that it in two years Egypt could not pa;/ her own way another international conlttenco would be necessary to settle what next should bo done. Sir Evelyn wished to avoid this at all costs, and he turned the i corner just in time. I

His reforms in all departments were hampered from the first by conditions, incernal and external, which were extraneous t<> the financial problem. The Jiritisn Protectorate was veiled and unavowed, and consequently at every step Sir Evelyn Baring's intervention laid itself open to the criticism and resentment of otoer European Powers. Periodically tho question of British evacuation arose. jjir Kyelyn Baring had no distant horizon before him and did not know how long it wouid bo before his work would be interrupted or suddenly ended; indefiniteness and uncertainty complicated a situation fundamentally false, and over all was a cloud of international jealousies and perversities, and behind all. the shadowy suzerainty of the bultan, a focus point for all sorts of international complications. Obviously a decree and quality of tact amounting to genius were required in a man who could reconcile so many factions with tho central fact of Ills real functions, and who could pursue his work through all this tangle of complications without arousing susceptibilities that he could not allay or boldly defy Despite all checks, native and external the work of reform progressed steadily, each department being tackled in turn and in Tn ™°. r ß»niacd from top to bottom, in 1896 Egypt was able to sot about the task of reconquering the abandoned Soudan and one-of the cheapest military campaigns in history, beginning with the advance to Dongola m 18bo, and ending with the battle of Omdurman, cost the Egyptian Treasury a sum of only two millions, after deduction had been made of the amount spent m permanent works like railways and telegraphs. Tho Anglo-French Convention of 1904 restricting the operation of the Caisse do la Dette, was the last stage in the emancipation of tho government of Egvpt from a complex financial control, and Egypt had been led out of its bondage Behind ail this regenerative work stood Lord Cromer. Hβ was, of course, fortunate in the coadjutors who helped him in the departmenta tasks, and much of what credit » due to the British occupation inus W shared among men like Sir Edwin Vincent who was Financial Adviser during the lein years of tho eighties; Sir Elwin PaW who succeeded him; and Sir Eldon Goret! who followed; and tho construction of a nev army was tho work of Sir Evelyn Wood Lord Grenfell, and Lord Kitchener But apart from the army, Lord Cromer'was the ""'*« "»? inspiring mind. - Caution was the keynote of his character, combined with firmness, which never retreated from tho point to whien it had advanced. He was no believer in 'tho strong side of Lnperiabsm, and his motto was for the Egjptians. _ His popularity with tho native officials increased with tho extension than that is needed to his methods. The name of -Baring acted as a charm among tho fellaheen, and his reports to the British Government were translated into the vernacular, and circulated by native atrc'iicv and gave the peasantry tho onlv chance of knowing how they woro governed. Lord Cromer. who was born in 1841 the ninth son of Mr Honry Baring, M P ' mnr . ried in 1876 Ethol Stanley, daughter "'of Sir Rowland Stanley Errington, but in 1898 was loft a widower with two sons; and in .1301 he married Lady ICatherine Thynne daughter of the fourth Marquess of Bath '