SIR MONTAGUE BARLOW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22211, 14 March 1934, Page 8

SIR MONTAGUE BARLOW

DEPARTURE FOR THE NORTH ENGAGEMENT REPORTED A distinguished English visitor, Sir Montague Barlow, who has been spending some time in Dunedin, left for Christchurch yesterday accompanied by his sister. Miss Evelyn Barlow, and Miss Read. Prior to his departure. Sir Montague expressed the preaaure which he and the members of his party had derived from their tour of the Dominion.

“ We are charmed with New Zealand,” he said, “ delighted with the climate, which is just the climate in which a person may work as well as shirk, and we have been much drawn towards the people. Early in my political career Sir Joseph Chamberlain said to me: ‘ Remember that in Imperial matters New Zealand will always do its share and a little more.’ That influenced me in favour of your Dominion, and I looked forward to the visit, with high anticipation and pleasure, but I can say, as the Queen of Sheba said, that the half\ of it was not told. If you deem it worth while you may give that as my message to New Zealand. The trip, the climate, the quality of your people, have given me a new interest in life, and I shall remember this town as long as memory lasts.”

Whether these last words contained any underlying significance is not known, but a Daily Times reporter learned yesterday that Sir Montague and Miss Read had become engaged and that it was their intention to be married in Christchurch. To-morrow was the day mentioned as that on which the ceremony would take place.

According to present arrangements, Sir Montague and his party expect to leave Auckland on March 27 for Sydney and will travel to London via Panama. It is further stated that Sir Montague contemplates returning to the Dominion and that ho may take up his residence in Christchurch.

Sir Montague Barlow, who was a member of the British Cabinet as Minister of Labour from October, 1922, to January, 1924, is the son of the late dean of Peterborough. He is a Privy Councillor, LL.D.. M.A., F.S.A. (fellow of the Society of Antiquaries), a bar-rister-at-law and chairman of the London Diocesan Fund. He was educated at Repton and then read law at King’s College, Cambridge, where he took second-class classical tripos and first-class law tripos. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1895, and practised mainly in educational and charity cases. He entered the House of Commons in 1910 as Conservative member for South Salford and retained the seat until December, 1923. After occupying the post of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour for two years, he became Minister with a seat in the Cabinet. He represented the British Government at the International Labour Conference at Genoa in 1920 and at Geneva in 1921 and 1922. For a period of 20 years he occupied a seat on the directorate of Sotheby and Co., and was for a time chairman of this famous company.

Sir Montague Barlow arrived in the Dominion by the Rangitiki on February 16. After a short stay in Wellington and Christchurch he came on to Dunedin, where the duration of his stay was somewhat protracted owing to the illness of his sister, who was an inmate of a private hospital here for some" weeks. He (is an old friend of Archbishop Julius of Christchurch.