DASTARDLY CRIME.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20441, 20 October 1934, Page 1

DASTARDLY CRIME.

Sir John Simon on Death of King Alexander. British Official Wireless. (Received October 20, 1.15 p.m.) RUGBY, October 19. Sir John Simon, in a speech at Northampton, made a short reference to the horrible event which occurred at Marseilles ten days ago, and to the attitude of Great Britain in relation to the immediate European situation. Fie said: “The uppermost thought of all of us when we heard of this dastardly crime was not one of high policy or even of the risks which in some cases accompany the splendours of Royalty, but of husband and father so tragically removed; of his sorrowing widow and of the little boy just starting his new term like other little boys at an English school, and now suddenly called away to be plunged into the vortex of the complicated affairs of his country. It is as a Roman poet said: ‘ These mortal things that touch the heart.’

“At the same moment, by r cruel means, France lost an eminent statesman, ripe in years and experience, whose high qualities of energy and resource I had learned, in the course of personal collaboration at Geneva, greatly to admire. The assassination is not only the wickedest, but it is the most stupid of political crimes. How seldom in history, from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the assassin ation of Dr Dollfuss, has a political assassination accomplished its intended result.”