Byng of Vimy.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17585, 14 December 1928, Page 11

Byng of Vimy.

Viscount Byng, of Vimy, the famous commander of the Canadians in France, aiid former Viceroy of Canada, has tack - ed a good many queer jobs in his career, but none so queer as the command of London's 20,000 police in a period of historic transition. . , • The job is bigger than it sounds. In fact the Home Secretary, Sir W. Joynson-Hicks, maintained in the face of a Parhmentary storm that Lord Byng \vfls the only man in sight to handle it. And probably he wae right, for Byng is an interesting psychological study and a most unusual man. ; , ~>, , He was living the peaceful life of a retired,, soldier on his modest demesne at Thorpe le Soken, a little Essex village, when the notorious Money-Savidge pet-tihe-in-the-park case sent a train spluttering through Parliament and the Press and exploded a large-sized ir.ihd under Scotland Yard and its chief, the former army provost Marshal, General Sir William Horwood. A Romantic Scene. The opening picture is worth etching. An unusually fine night in spring, Hyde Park, with its celebrated tan horse ride its fountains, avenues statues, pools, bird and rabbit sanctuaries lies dreaming un- . der the blue, tender sky just across the road from the western wall of this King s back garden. . , One would have said that the lights had been especially dimmed and thinned out by a romantic city council to favour lovers' talks and caresses. Into this enchanted park at the witching hour of 9.30 p.m., having dined tete-a-tetc at a discreet little restaurant, stroll Sir Leo Money, noted econoomist (married) and a pretty blonde, Irene Savidge (spinster), and sit on a secluded bench to talk of this and that. Here the picture should fade out. But the action is unexpectedly carried on by two members of the plain clothes patrol, who, padding along oh the look-out for trouble perceive the elderly man and the young girl in what they subsequently swear to be a highly indelicate posturo, warranting, instant arrest. The sequel may bo given succinctly in three phases: . Phase I.—Arrest of the aforesaid couple. Acquittal by Magistrate, who doubts uncorroborated police evidence. Leaders in Press, questions in Parliament. Po ' lce commissioner's inquiry and contemplated prosecution of tho two policemen for pexlury. Director of Public Prosecution, uirected by Home Secretary, ordets Scotland Yard inspector to get statements preliminary to framing charge Phase 2.—Scotland Yard detectives call for Irene Savidge at her place of business and carry her off to the Yard in a fast car, and there interrogate her for five hours—at times indelicately, she subsequently alleges. Her father goes to the House of Commons, gets hold of a Social Lit member in lieu' of the Tory member he wants tells him what has happened, and said member gets up and tells Parliament all about it Electric effect! For onro • Socialist and Tory share a common indignation. This is the notorious third degree!" Also, a clear infringement by tho police of the first and most sacred principle of life, government and the constitution—the liberty of the subject. Phase 3-^Worried Home Secretary appoints a tribunal representing all parties. Which; proceeds to call everyone involved before it, from police commissioner of the metropolis down Before their report can be published tho commissioner resigns, and the Home Secretary has to admit that ' the police are conducting a sort of passive strike by refusing to make arrests in the park—the usual average is forty a month—with tho result that the park -nil Jaacbrne a "scandal to civilisation." i The world, reading tho story through the cabled day-to-day reports, laughs, England laughs. But Mr Stanley Baldwin, his Home Secretary and the Tory party leaders do not laugh, for they recogoise that the laugh of the nation is a »our one, lacking real mirth. They realise that if something is not done juickly to reassure the island race jealdus of its liberties and sweeten the re-

lations between police and public, there will be trouble in the party, and a gust )f passion in the country that will swing uillions of votes into the enemy camp at >he coming general election. They know that on an issue of police rersus the people the latter will win, and >hey,also know that if the police feel they ire being made scapegoats in this silly Business the sluicegates that hold back the criminal underworld will slip open and the present figures of 130,000 major crimes and 150 murders per annum will show a large incre?se. Must Hold the Fort. . Byng of Vimy is the practical solu;ion of this complicated politico-police problem. His job is to "reinspire" the police. He has to hold the police fort while i royal commission, with the Earl of [leading, former Lord Chief Justice of England, Indian Viceroy, and once British Ambassador to Washington, in

Now Holds The London Front.

the chair, investigates the whole police system and. fnmes its report. Viscount Byng had earned the repose he was taking when he was call'-' out of retirement to head London's 'ice. His active soldiering life covers the British campaigns of forty years. He had his first taste of steel and lead charging at the head of bis cavalry troop against the dervishes of the Sudan, back in 'B4. The boy subaltern of that day developed into the man who manoeuvred 300,000 men of the third British Army in the final operations which smashed the great Hindenberg line, iind with it the iron German back, in 1918. Then there was that memorable viceroyality in Canada, which has written a "page" into Empire history, because at its end the issue of Crown versus Colony was acutely raised in the three-cor-nered clash between Tory leader, Liberal leader and Governor-General. A patrician, seventh son of the Scottish Earl of Strafford, blue-eyed, tall, with a body of whipcord and steel, ho owes his rise to merit. lie has survived searching tests and achieved a uniqie prestige. He is, incidentally, about tho only general in England _ who does not possess the military mind—with its notable defects in the civil sphere. . "■ .... He was twenty-one when he drank his first toast to "The King!" in old port in the mess of the 10th Hussars, one of the crack regiments; twenty-two when ho embarked for the Sudan war with the force bound to avenge the murder of "Chinese" Gordon at Khartoum; and thirty-eight when he returned from the South African War, a colonel. , There end the stories of most British patricians who adopt the Army as a career. They retire with a colonelcy a pension of £9OO and a paternal or avuncular inheritance (or a rich wife) and live happily ever after in a good hunting country. But Byng was set upon a career. Ho had done fine work. He had youth, energy, ambition, purpose, and a little bevond his pay. Ho came home, bro!*e away from the regiment dead end by way of the command of a cavalry school, and at fortythree o ot n ' s Dl '' : S" de and nis firsfc stcp in the world ot general ofhceio. ' Byn;j i - i 1912 got tho command in Egypt,"* where Kitchener was England's ' viceroy; and it was in the commander-in-chief's big, cool house in Cairo, two years later that he heard tho Srst rumbling echoes of tho war. , He was too good a man to be Jssft in the Egyptian theotre. Kitchener summoned him home; and, in command of a cavalry division, he was a tower of strength to that first little British Army that retreated from Mons, stood on the Ypres line' and af'.er tremendous fighting held the old cloth town. Byng was "biooded" as an infantry "■eneraT in tho Gallipoli campaign of 'ls. It was wild and desperate work, clinging to "that damned peninsula," as the Westerner, who hated Winston Churchill s Dardanelles strategy, called it. But Byng did well and presently returned to the Flanders front with a new order (Knight Commander of tho Bath) and a jump in rank to lieutenant-general. His Z'.g Chance.

In the late spring of 'l6 came his big chance. The Cfnadiaia needed a commander of a special typ*. A formal man was no good. A spit-and-pohsh general would break their hearts. They required a leader , who was at onco physically impressive,' able,' strong,' a ■■firm disciplinarian, and yet a man who could capture their hoarts and imaginations, a general, besides, who would not "get the goat of the citizen officers. • ' The war chiefs took council and choso Byng. Byng was a success. The Canadians admired his robust physiquo and tho "no damn nonsense" air about him. They liked his blue glance, like a sword-thrust, his calm and deliberaticn in a crisis and tho broad smile into which his blunt, stern, Nordic face so e-sily crumpled. Also they liked his knack of leading them to victory after victory. For his part Byng, a cavalryman, understood these Canadians, a wilder crowd than the British troops ho had always been accustomed to, 1«« r.menab.e to discipline, men with mow d»h but less dour obstinacy—magnificent #r«rm troops, at flieir best in the assoult. He never made a mistake with them. And he earned them the admiration of the entire Allied fores Ly lU operation which resulted in the storm.iw of Vimy Ridge, the tremendous baali'-r from which Byng takes his titla name, the rcost glorious of all the Canadians' in France.

The feat won Byng, hitherto a corps commander, command of the TMni Bntish Army, incorporating Iho Canadian Corps. He helped to break through the German line in September, and r.iter the war went over to Canada, where he made an immensely popular Governor-General.