THIRD EDITION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9191, 21 March 1908, Page 5

THIRD EDITION.

OBITUARY. ■ ♦ — SIR NICHOLAS O'CONOR. United Press Association — By Electric Telegraph— Copyright. LONDON, March 20. The death is announced of the Right &ob Sir Nicholas O'Conox, British ambassador at Constantinople. ! (Sir Nioholas Roderiok o' Conor was Iborn in. Ireland in 1843, and was eduIcated at Stbnyhurst. He entered the ifliplomatio service in 1866, and held authoritative positions at Berlin, Madrid. Paris, Pekhij St PeteTshurg, ■Washington, Bulgaria, The Hague and »t Rio de Janeiro, and .bas always acquitted himself with distinction and honour. He succeeded Lord Currie at jfche Porte in 1898J just after the Armassacres had sent a great ifcudder of horror through/ the civilised World. His task was not an easy one |n Oonstantinople ? for the strong ©onidemixatory agitation in England and the act of Lord Ourrie in sheltering the Grand Vizier on his flight from , Court, had made all Englishmen hated Jn Turkish eyes. Only his exalted office preserved him from harm, and impotent hatred subjected him to all manner of small annoyances. A few years '•go he was asked by the Sultan to stop » performance of " Dick Whittington" in the British colony, on the ground that it was "immoral, 5 and he had been called upon to exercise his diploanatite powers in a hundred other small •nd equally petty ways. But by degrees the man triumphed, and the witty Irishman and the Sultan were latterly fast friends. The Turks have punned on his name, calling him "Aconour," which means intelligent and easy to get on with. Sir Nioholas O'ConOT spelt his name with a single "n," because, like the O'Conor Don, he traced his ancestry to Roderick, the last Milesian monarch in Ireland, who concluded the Windsor treaty with Peary 11. in 1175.)