FAME IN A NIGHT

Taranaki Daily News, 21 May 1928, Page 15

FAME IN A NIGHT

LORD CUSHEN'DUN’S SPEECH CRUSHING RHETORIC. RUSSIANS OVERWHELMED. Negative as were the results of the .recent Preparatory Disarmament Commission at Geneva, at least it cannot be denied that, in the apotheosis of Lord Cushendun, the proceedings furnished a first-class sensation. For years Viscounfi Ceeil, as spokesman of Great Britain, had been a familiar figure, but who was his successor? The very name Cushendun, recently adopted, was a puzzle, both in spelling and pronunciation. Then suddenly there occurred an amazing scene. An international conference, composed of baffled and irritated diplomatists and sceptical experts, forgot Its official restraints, and, grate- ; ful to Lord Cushendun, broke into scarcely precedented cheering. In the international arena a new personage had arrived. Like many another statesman, lie had won his fame by a single speech. The occasion was electric. There were the Russians, led by the. suave yet cyni|eal Litvinoff, whose demands for total i disarmament, so it -was held, had been pressed for the very reason that they I could not be coneeded; whose pleas for peace were discounted as mere propaganda. Y’et other nations, accused of I capitalism, had no alternative to ofler, . and their delegates sat silent and smarting under the sarcasms of Communism. This was the awkward moment when there arose a man 6ft and several inches in height, broad of build, ruddy of complexion, ponderous,, venerable, and, above all, deliberate in his diction. For the better part of two hours he dominated the scene, assailing Litvinoff with an elaborate yet crushing courtesy and saying to the Communists what most of his audience had been wanting to say. This time it was Goliath whose broadsword and spear, like a weaver's beam, won the combat.

OF THE RACE OF ROB ROY. Lord Cushendun is now to be reckoned among the men who have made a difference. As a factor in the situation he has to be understood, and first it should be realised that his title was bestowed only last year. The real man whom we have to consider is not a peer but a commoner, well known at Westminster as Ronald McNeill. In physique and in outlook Lord Cushendun belongs, if not to the clan, at least to the race of Rob Roy. His blood is Scottish. His heme is Irish. It is fighting blood. It is a home built on a battlefield. The Ulsterman, colonist and conqueror, dwells amid the assumptions of conflict. Unless he can find some fos Io face he is out of luek. Hence the delight with which Lord Cushendun greeted the Russians. They were raw material for his machinery of denunciation. It is quite true that young McNeill was sent across the water to Harrow for his education. But what was that Harrow? It was the Harrow where a boy could boast to an Etonian, as one of them did, that at least his school bad never disgraced itself by producing a Gladstone. Neither at Harrow nor at Christ Church, Oxford, to which college he proceeded, vas there any tendency to disturb his inherited antagonisms. McNeill emerged the best of fellows, straight, sincere, popular and pleasant to deal with, and in polities a Conservative. A PARTIALITY FOR JOURNALISM. In duo course he was called to the Bar. But his real interest was not law. Ho preferred jouralism, and for some years edited the “St. James’ Gazette.” He was also assistant editor of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However direct may be his impulses, he is a man of wide reading, with a historic background. He is well acquainted with the age-long feuds of mankind—an authority on the disappointments of the past rather than the hopes of the future. To the ambition of such a man there could be but one goal, and that was Parliament. Yet during the flood-tide of Asquithian Liberalism, the constituencies had no use for a Ronald McNeill. It was not until he had fought four unsuccessful contests that, a man in his fifties, he was returned at last by Kent and Canterbury to Westminster. In a House of Commons where Pitt was Prime Minister at the age of 25 years this was a late start. What Confronted McNeill was Asquith’s proposal to grant Gladstonian Home Rule to Ireland. By this infamy, as he regarded it, every fibre of his being was outraged. There w-cre days of storm and stress when his complexion deepened to all the hues of uncontroL lable anger. With all the atavism of a wild Highlander, disciplined by social restraints, he fought the other Celts and their Sassenach allies. To him they were as Bolshevik! horn before thentime. It was by talking to Asquith that he learned how to talk to Litvinoff.

With the inauguration of Um Irish Free State this provocative issue became a fait accompli. The Ulstermen had to bow to the inevitable. But they never forgave tho villain whom they held responsible for the betrayal, as they regarded it, of the United Kingdom. If there had to be a coalition, so McNeill argued, let Lloyd George be Prime Minister, but do not let anybody suggest that such a Prime Minister should be admitted to the ranks of Con servatism. The man who won the war had committed an unpardonable ! crime, and should be consigned at the earliest moment to outer darkness. McNeill was among the conspirators who introduced Bonar Law and Baldwin into Downing Street.

APPOINTMENT TO FOREIGN OFFICE Yet when, a man of 60, he was appointed Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, there was a spasm of surprise. It is a position usually reserved not for old age but for youth, for a man of safe rather than of strong opinions. It did not seem as if McNeill' could lay aside his contentious instincts. Freedom of the seas? When Sir Edward Grey had suggested to the United States that freedom of the sens might be discussed after the war, had not McNeill roundly declared that the phrase was of German origin—the kind of verbiage over which a man of actualities like Carlyle would have "chuckled?” Honours? Had they not been conferred on men who had made money in unpatriotic fashion? He even specified names,, and from, the gallery

a victim shouted, "That Is a false statement.” It is amid such cuts and thrusts that Ronald McNeill has fought his way through life. Even as a Minister he has appeared as protagonist against the Revised Prayer Book. For the AngloCatholies he has no use, none whatever. That he appears to have registered a success —at any rate a momentary success —where Lord Ceeil failed cannot be denied. But account should be taken of the difference between the objectives pursued by the two men. If Lord Cecil failed it was because he was attempting the difficulties of the constructive. If Lord Cushendun;succeeded,it was be-

cause he was content with the merely j critical. His speech expressed not a ! policy but a non possumus.—P. W. Wilson, in Auckland Star.