LADYSMITH DINNER

Southland Times, Issue 18938, 11 May 1923, Page 11

LADYSMITH DINNER

SEIGE SURVIVORS ASSEMBLE IN LONDON.

The Ladysmith dinner held last February at Prince’s Restaurant, London, was attended by more than fifty officers who have survived the days of the siege. Though interrupted by the late war, the dinner has become an annual event, regularly held on the day of the relief, February 28, when at last the four months blockade broken through. Admiral Sir Lionel Halsey presided on this occasion, and among the many distinguished officers present were General S’r lan Hamilton, General Sir Nevil Macready, Sir Edward Ward (permanently known, in Sir George White’s phrase, „as “the best commissariat officer since Moses"), General Sir Edward May —in fact the list of famous soldiers would be too long to quote, for it is really remarkable how many officers who shared the dangers and hardships of the siege have risen to high positions in the service and the country. Colonel Archer-Shee acted as hon secretary and organiser for the occasion. Out of the many war correspondents shut up with Sir George White’s little division few still survive, but they were represented by Colonial Lionel James, Sir William Maxwell and Mr Henry Nevison. The speeches were pleasingly few and brief, says a London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, the speakers dwelsiege, not only in the South Afrcan War but in the development of the spirit of union between the Navy and Army on the one hand and between the Mother Country and our outlying fellow-subjects on the other. Illustrations upon both these points were naturally drawn from the history of the Great War itself.