SALE OF HONOURS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 252, 23 September 1929, Page 2

SALE OF HONOURS.

SEVERE CRITICISM. “It is difficult to trace any instance of Royal patronage so misdirected as tire clumsy batch of honours forced on the Sovereign near the close of the regime of the Lloyd George Coalition Government.” This is the conclusion of Sir George Arthur private secretary to the late Earl Kitchener, stated in his book, “The Life of the King,” which Messrs Jonathan Cape are publishing. He describes Mr Lloyd George’s recommendations for honours as an unhappy occasion, suggesting that the Crown’s reliance on the advice of even the most responsible Minister should have limitations.

“A murmur could not be repressed,” he writes, “when a personally estimable furniture, dealer, the conduct of whose business had not been too successful for the original shareholders, was to enjoy the same rank as general officers who led large armies to victory.” )

“Of a second nominee,” Sir George Arthur writes, “it was. stated that he gave evidence before the Income-tax Commissioner that in the middle of the war he transferred himself and his business, capitalised at £20000,000, to a domicile abroad in order to escape taxation. A third nominee admitted dealing with the enemy in wartime, though within official knowledge. In the oase of a fourth nominee the election was so bizarre that eventually Lord Birkenhead solved tire difficulty by producing a letter in which Sir Joseph Robinson, tho South African gold magnate, declined a peerage. It is understood the letter was not secured lvithout difficulty, as Sir Joseph Robinson, being deaf, was for 6ome time unable, to gather whether the question concerned the increasing of tho amount already deposited, or the renouncing of the honour and the recovering of the cheque.”