LORD BIRKENHEAD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21196, 29 November 1930, Page 9

LORD BIRKENHEAD.

A BRIEF APPRAISEMENT. The following brief outline of the career of Lord Birkenhead appeared in the New Sportsman on October 4:— Lord Birkenhead, who died on Tuesday, was one of the cleverest men of his generation. He made his mark at Oxford; he leaped into fame with his maiden speech in the House of Commons; he piled up a fortune at the Bar; and he filled high offices in the State. He used his brains consistently and ruthlessly in the service of his ideal—his own material success. He enjoyed the good things of life on true Cyrenaic principles. Virtues, indeed, he had—courage, generosity, loyalty to his friends. But in public he so comported himself that what the world knew best in him was arrogance and cynicism. At the bar “ F, E.” was a brilliant pleader and a formidable antagonist; the great work of the codification of the law of property was largely his work; ns Lord Chancellor he delivered judgments that showed his outstanding quality on the bench. The most creditable thing in his political career was the ‘part he played in the settlement of Ireland; the good he did then went far to atone for the mischief he had done before in Irish affairs. For the rest, though his shrewd judgment may often have been useful to his colleagues in the Government or to his party, he performed no great service and supported no great cause. In the last office he held, as Secretary of State for India, he was sadly out of place. When he left politics for the city, politics lost little.

There is every prospect that Canada will live up to her reputation of being a land of wheat and mellow fruitfulness. It is estimated that the apple crop, for instance, will run to well over 3,000,000 barrels, the bulk of which will he from British Columbia. What this represents in terms of individual fruits may be judged from the fact that the average barrel holds 1351 b of apples. Ontario lias had a bumper crop of cherries, the total production being no less than 220,000 bushels. Again, there are plums and peaches in abundance, Ontario alone yielding an estimated crop of 740,000 bushels of peaches. Canada is probably one of the greatest fruiteating countries in the world.