VISCOUNT GREY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22053, 8 September 1933, Page 9

VISCOUNT GREY

DEATH ANNOUNCED WARTIME STATESMAN (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, September 7. (Received Sept. 7, at 8.30 p.m.) The death is announced of Viscount Grey. AN EARLIER MESSAGE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 6. , Viscount Grey is stated to be mucn weaker. He has been unconscious now for over 50 hours. Edward Grey, created Viscount Grey of Fallodon in 1910, began his career as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (under Lord Rosebery) in 1892, holding that office until 189."). He was M.P. (Liberal) for Berwick from 1895 to 1910, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1905 to 1910, and temporary Ambassador to the United States in 1919. His book, "Fallodon Papers" (1920), was acclaimed not merely as one of the major documents of

history, but as a literary achievement of quite exceptional power, while his books on natural history—fly fishing and birds —are also highly regarded. According to Mr A. G. Gardiner, "he went into public life without enthusiasm and escaped from it with gratitude. His spirit is that of the recluse, and his thought contemplative rather than active. He is happier in throwing bait to the fish than in throwing bouquets to the electorate, and he has a greater passion for birds than for blue books." Viscount Grey was Chancellor of Oxford University since 1928. VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON v * AN IMPRESSION By 0. R. Allen. An Albert Hall crowd varies according to the business in progress in that vast edifice, which the London busman will tell you is the Kensington Gas Works—or so he would have told you in the days when busmen wore billycocks. The matter in hand on that occasion when I heard Viscount Grey address a large audience was the League of Nations. He was preceded by Lord Robert Cecil, that most redoubtable champion of the cause. One could feel that Lord Robert was oppressed by his surroundings, by the fact that he was not a Melba or a Kreisler witli the acoustics of that great forum well in hand. It was written by somebody that when Guy d'Hardelot sang her own ballads in the Albert Hall, the girls' in the adjoining buffet dropped tears into the cups of tea wherewith they were trafficking. One could feel the strain on Lord Robert's voice. One's own vocal chords responded in sympathy., Knowing what one did of the man's sincerity in his championship of the cause, one readily understood the travail that the expression of it seemed to entail. Then there came one of the last of the great Liberals, the gentle naturalist whom Fate had placed in the most difficult of positions at the outbreak of the war. " I can see no way out of the labyrinth," he had declared. Prom the labyrinth of the Albert Hall, with its tiers of seats and its plethora of alleyways, he clearly saw his way out. The place did not oppress him in the least. He might have been discoursing gently from some point of vantage in his own demesne, among the birds he loved so well. His voice was equable, but it carried—and that without the aid of an amplifier. Of the three speakers that day—and the third was Mr Clynes, whose voice was redolent of the Nonconformist pulpit—he was incomparably the most impressive. Another impression of Lord Grey is associated with a building in the vicinity of Dean's Yard, Westminster. It stands adjacent to the offices in Tnfton street of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. One reaches it by way of cloisters wherefrom one may cateh the sounds of Westminster School boys at play. It is thj National Library for the Blind, H plane to break the heart of any bibliophile. There the literature of the world is parodied in unwieldy volumes filled with embossed hierogliphs. Only to the initiated do they mean anything at all. Lord Grey was one of these initiated, though I cannot say if he ever attained to any proficiency as a reader or writer of Braille. Some may remember a cable which appeared in the New Zealand newspapers to the effect that Lord Grey was threatened with loss of sight, and that he was studying the Braille embossed type. Under the auspices of the National Library for the Blind an animal reading competition is held at the National Library. Competitors come from all parts of Britain to compete in this festival, if such it can be called. The adjudicators are selected from the best intellects in the land. Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson, Dame Kendall, and Mr J. C. Squire have acted as judges from time to time. Lord Frederick Hamilton presided on one occasion, and was compelled to listen to a number of girls and boys reading an extract from " Here, There, and Everywhere," by means of their fingers. On another occasion Lord Grey presided, and one recalls his humorous account of his struggle to master the intricacies of the Braille system at-the outset. Braille induces a tendency to hypercriticism in the reader. Any fault of const ruction or grammar manifests itself, at least to the reader who is not a speedking. When one reads deliberately one reads critically. Braille is also prone to a certain elusiveness on certain occasions, such as cold mornings, which can only be described as devilish. 1 cannot recall the false quantity which held Lord Grey up, for what, in the interests of the picturesque, he described as the best part of a morning. This is not the place to write of Lord Grey's political career, nor of what he has accomplished as a naturalist or as a man of letters. It is a platitude that the busiest persons find time to do the most. Here one can but hope to record two impressions. One takes one's politics from one's surroundings, unless one happens to be possessed of a robust mind. As one who has always rejoiced with the Conservative Party

when it rejoiced and wept when it wept* I must confess to a prejudice in disfavour of the great Liberal, the impression of whose personality I am attempting to record. The dominating nota of the first impression is one of mastery —the mastery that is born, not of force but of inherent quietude. Whether Lord Grey studied to be quiet I cannot say. The impression was that he had strayed into that vast assembly from the privacy of his garden, and that he, in some subtlt way, continued to enjoy the immunity provided by his native shelter. The other impression is one of tempered geniality. There was no suspicion of gusli, no subtle playing upon the vol pathetica, as speakers are apt to play in concourses of such a nature. He made the competitors feel that he was one of them, as, for the time being, indeed. he was.