In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1932, Page 7

In the Public Eye

One: distinguished man has succeeded another as Field Marshal- in the British Army, Lord Byng having received the appointment 'which was previously held by Lord Plumer.

Lord Byng has been best known latterly for his work as v Commissioner of the London Police, a post from which he resigned in 1930. Previously he was Governor-General of '. Canada for five years, and this appointment came as the climax to a long and brilliant military career. Lord Byng was born in 1862 and was the seventh son of the Earl of Strafford. He served in the cavalry and distinguished himself both in the Sudan and in the South African campaign. In 1914 he was in the fighting at Ypres and then passed x to the Cavalry Corps, which he commanded in 1915 nntil he passed to the. Ninth Army Corps. _ With them n 6 served at Gallipoli and.then returned .to France to take command of tl§j Seventeenth Corps and later of the Canadian Corps, which became knojvn as.the "Byng •Boys." He led them at Vimy Eidee, from which he takes^his title, and then went on to cpmmand the.Third Army which he led until, the close of the war He was in command at the First Battle o± Cambrai when amass attack made by British tanks might have brought about a swift victory had there been forces enough to exploit the- great advantage gained. When' the\ great offensive' began in August, 1918, ■General Byn» was given the difficult task of clearing' out the aismal, trench-seamed area of the Somme and then-of assaulting the Hihdenburg Line, along, its northern section. His army broke through ;the outer section of the German defences and ' dealt the enemy a tremendous blow. It then stormed the Hindenburg Line and reached open country, the Canadians winning especial distinction. After the war General Byng received a special grant of £30,000, the thanks of Parliament, and a barony. After his return from Canada he was made a Viscount but refused to pay the fees charged for the appointment. Mr. F. s. Smythe. ' The second-iiycommand of the new British expedition, to attempt the conquest of untamed Mount Everest, Mr Francis S. Smythe, is still a young man. He was born in 1900, and after education m engineering joined the Air Force, from which he was invalided in 1928. This will be his; third .great effort to conquer. a mountain, for he has been in the North Indian region twice before. In 1930 he was a member of the International Expedition which attacked Kanehenjunga, and he climbed the Jousong pealc On this journey Mr. Smythe represented the London "Times" and the New York "Times," and he described how the feat was accomplished. The following year Smythe led his own expedition against a mighty mountain, Kamct, and made the climb of this giant peak, 25,447 feet high. This was accomplished in June of last ' year. Fifty-five coolies carried 2400 pounds of equipment to the base of the peak, and in his report of the climb Smythe declared that the trek to the base camp would probably rauk as the most dangerous part of the whole journey. Narrow roads and hairpin beads made travelling precarious. The actual climb was begun on Bth June, and three days later Base Camp ho. 2 was set up at an altitude of 18,600 feet. The way from Base Camp No. 1 had to be made across the East Kaniet glacier. Five miles up, the glacier narrows into agorgo and walls of ice, hundreds of feet in height lean outwards-and over the reddish precipices. Frpm Base Camp* No. 2 a string of camps was established, with' the increase in altitude smaller each time. Three separate attempts had to be made before a 'suitable site could be reached for Camp 4, and after that Camp 5 was.an easier matter. -From there on the expedition climbed over unknown ground. The route followed was that used by C. F. Meade, who in 1912 ascended to within 2000 feet of the summit. - . ' . i Lord Tyrrell.

The man who announced the postponement of .the London Conference this ■week without waiting for all the replies from the invited Powers, Lord Tyrrell,- is the British Ambassador to Paris and previously occupied Sir Eric Drummond's old v post, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Lord Tyrrell has had "V long and distinguished, career since he left Balliol College and entered the Foreign Office. He was private secretary to Lord Sanderson, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, from 1896 to 1903, and secretary to the Imperial Defence Committee from 1903 to 1904, after which lie received appointment as Acting Second Secretary at the Embassy.at Kome. By 1907 he was senior clerk in the Foreign Office and private secretary to Sir Edward Grey, whose name was written so largely across Britain's foreign policy in the years before the "World War,' and in 1919 he became Assistant Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (succeeding Sir Eric Drumniond when that gentleman went to the League of Nations), being made a Privy Councillor in 1928, receiving the G.C.M.Gr..in 1925. and a barony in 1929. Prince Lichnowsky, in ' his "Memoirs" asserted that Lord Carnock (then Sir Arthur Nicolson) and Lord Tyrrell (then Sir Arthur Tyrrell) were the t-nro men who had the greatest influence at the Foreign Office. ,It is easy to believo that Lord Tyrrell 'a personality would gain, him influence, for he is a man of commanding presence, a brilliant linguist, and possessed of a remarkable knowledge of the tangled politics of European States. His culture and urbanity and his considerable wit have made him a favourite with the highest circles in France, where he has accomplished great things for Britain,

The British Bar -will be worthily represented at the meeting of the International Bar Association at Washington, for the Motherland's delegate is to be Lord Beading, one of the outstanding figures in British"' life, a former Viceroy of India, and a great lawyer.

Lord Beading* (he holds the rank of Marquess) might 'be described by a biographer in a book bearing the title "From. Cabin-boy to Viceroy," for that has beea his career. He paid his first visit to, India as a. ship's drudge, and when, in 1921, he received the. honours accorded a Governor-General, he recalled the circumstances of this earlier visit and remarked that, on his first call he had not been reqeived with a public banquet. He was described as "the most friendly Viceroy ever "to land in Inßia," and he earned that title by patient and thorough administration*' and by kindness and consideration. In Ms recent book, "A Letter from India," Edward Thompson has a- story of Lord Reading being given the privileges o± a tiger hunt and how, instead of shooting from his hidden, lair, the Viceroy watched entranced the antics of the cubs astthey played with their mother, forgetting all about the circumstances of the chase-in his interest in the animals themselves. •

I This humanitarian, ruler was born in London in 1860,.and his-father was a. London merchant. , There has been no English Judge who has lived as adventurous a life as-Lord Reading, for l>e sailed before the. mast as' a boy, aad journeyed up ' the, Hooghli River to Calcutta. He is an adroit and persuasive speaker, and his great tact, not to say subtlety, gained him the post of Ambassador at Washington, and enabled him thoroughly to win the people of the "Dinted States. Always a staunch Liberal in politics, lie was appointed Solicitor-General in 1910, and a few months later became AttorneyGeneral, being the first AttorneyGeneral to enter the British Cabinet. He was a member of Parliament from 1904 to 1913. Towardthe. end"of 1913 he was madevLord Chief Justice, and raised to the peerage, and in June, 1915, he received the G.C.B. in recognition of his services in the early days of the war. The following year a Viscpuntcy was conferred upon him. *In 1917 Lord Beading went to the United States- on a financial mission, and on, his return was, created an earl. Just before the end of the war he went to the United States of America, as Ambassador Extraordinary, and was' warmly welcomed, and after he returned to England in 1919 to take up his judicial work he was appointed Viceroy of India, a post which he held for five years, and -which gained him the rank of Marquess and the Captaincy1 of Deal Castle. The first Marchioness died some years ago ; and last year Lord Beading was married again, this time to his principal secretary, Miss Stella Chasnaud. ' Professor, Albert Einstein. Professor Albert Einstein, the great physicist, who has accepted a hew appointment'at Dr. Abraham Flexner's experimental University in the United States, has been a 'syorld figure now for some years, and his-position in the popular mind reflects the advance of science since the days of Galileo. It was- a difficult and dangerous job to be a maker of new universes -in the dark days of history, but Einstein, within a short time of the publication of his great theory of relativity, was revered by the average man.. . . Einstein is a man of exceptional character. His head is. that, of a musician, and his long hair forms a grey halo round, his face. He. has full lips, a child-like look; and a,high and domed forehead, which suggests, his intellect. In his early years -he ■ detested- the atmosphere at the. schpol. at.-Hunich where he weitt. to .be..taught. " "My teachers were like .non-commissioned officers," he said, and he felt-much relieved when he went to the freer atmosphere of Switzerland at the.age of sixteen. A kind of fear of life made him unassuming while he was young. Ho would'have been content to earn his living as a private tutor;.he roughed it at Bern, and at the age of_ S3 he was satisfied to obtain an appointment as a technical expert in the' Swiss Patent Office. But he did more than earn his living. As a schoolboy he had meditated upon Pythagoras and thought of the problems .of optics. Galileo, at the age of 18, had observed the , oscillation of a church lamp, compared its .movements with his own pulse and constructed a pendulum clock, i Newton, at 23,; had written his first essay about radiation. Einstein, as a student, wrote on the margin of one of the books,of Minkowsky, his predecessor, "Here one' would have to begin." In his twenty-seventh year he wrote seven, essays which contain. his system in essential points, including the theory of relativity. But though these weje published in a professional paper, they created no stir. Planck, the great Berlin mathematician, alone wrote to the author. Einstein was 30 when he obtained his professorship at* Zurich, highly recommended by M. Poincare ,and Mme. Curie. In 1914 he went as a. professor to Berlin. There he finished his first series of publications, solved the so-called Mercurial anomaly, and made a report to the Academy containing the theory of general relativity. This report was presented in 1910 and filled only a few pages. In 1919 he published his extended theory, challenging the Newtonian conception of the universe. His complete lack of selfconsciousness shows in . his every movement. He travelled third-class when he went to Paris fof the meetings of the International Union. He took only a snit-case to America. In the United States he was embarrassed to find himself "news" wherever he went, and at last discovered the technique of evasion of the newspapers.