MAJOR W. ELLIOT.

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1933, Page 23

MAJOR W. ELLIOT.

Although he did not enter Parliament until after the war, Major Walter E. Elliot, Minister of Agriculture, who, in the House of Commons on Monday explained the position in regard to the baton imports from Denmark; now enjoys great prominence in British politics. Major Elliot represented Lanark from 1918 till, the General Election of 1923, when he was defeated by a Labour candidate on the "Preference" question, but ho returned to the House of Commons after winning the byelection'for the IJelvingrove Division of Glasgow in the following year. He was born in 1888, educated at the Glasgow Academy and University, and is a graduate in science, medicine, and surgery. As an officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps he was attached to the Scots Greys during the Great "War, earning tho M.C. and bar in France. Entering Parliament after the war, he became Parliamentary Secretary to the Scottish Board of Health in Mr. Baldwin's first Government, and since, then he has beeil in some office or' other right through, except for the brief period he' was out of Parliament. From 1926 to 1929 he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. In 1927 Major Elliot published "Toryism and the Twentieth Century. " He has very decided views on the question •of female franchise, and during the course of a debate a year or two ago on "Is Woman Becoming Too Obtrusive?" he said: "Modern woman seems to feel that only by screaming about herself can.she attract sufficient attention to her case." He added that he believed the women of England only Wore silk stockings, sleeveless blouses, etc., because they happened to be in a majority of at least a .million. -. . .'.." Sir, lan: Hamilton. : . . Sir lan Hamilton, who in an address to British Legionaries early this week, said that ho disapproved/of the motto, "If you want peace, prepare for war," is best remembered in New Zealand because of his associations with the Dominion's troops during the Boer War and .the , Great .War. Sir ian '. is ■ a veteran of reight'or ten campaigns) which led up in a sort of crescendo to the Dardanelles adventure in 1915. He was born at Corfu in 1853, and' entered the Army twenty years later. He first saw Service, in the Afghan War,' and then fought in the Boer. War.. It was in South, Africa, in that, fierce' prelude to the South African War of ' 1899-1901, that One of his ;arms'was-permanently disabled as' the" resiilt ,of a severe wound. In spite of this injury jhe served in the Nile Expedition of 1884----85, and in Burma the following year. He was with the Chitral Relief Force in 1895, and eommaride'd a brigade during the Tirah campaign. In the early stages of the South African War ho commanded a mounted infantry division, and after a brief period at Home as Military Secretary at the War Office, returned to the Transvaal to act as Kitcheneii's deputy in charge of certain' phases of the operations towards the close of the war. For the next few years—except when he went to the Far East in 1904 to accompany the Japanese armies in the field—he1 held a succession of administrative posts in London. In 1910 he- was appointed Commajider-in-Chief in the Mediterranean and'lnspector-General .of the Overseas Forces. Then came the Great War, and, in 1915, the Gallipoli campaign, whose failure no one has ventured .to attribute to the British Com-mander-in-Chief.- Lord Roberts, not long before his death, was asked to name the ablest field commander among all the generals of the British. Army. His choice fell upon the- subject of this sketch. "He has not the- imperturr bable quality of Sir John French," a biographer wrote of Sir lan in 1915, "for his temperament is that of the artist; and he once confessed half-jest-ingly, but with a certain seriousness, that he had 'never gone into battle without being in a blue funk and wondering how on earth he was going to get through.'" Sir Samuel Hoare. <-- . ■ ■ Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary for India, who in the House of Commons this week explained the constitutionproblem of Burma, has had a distinguished career. He was born in 1880, and comes of a famous Quaker banking family. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, where ho was a double "blue," he entered Parliament as a Conservative in 1910, when he was thirty years of age. He was a captain iv the Norfolk Yeomanry during the war, and served later as a lieutenant-colonel on the General Staff, first grade,' being twice mentioned in dispatches. Invalided from the army during the war, h© did valuable- intelligence work in Russia —where he was the first to learn of'.Rasputin's death—and in Italy. He also acted as Deputy High Commissioner of the League of Nations for the care of Russian refugees. He became Secretary of State for Air in the Conservative Cabinet in 1922, after the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition. He was not at first a. member of Cabinet, but his work attracted' theatten* tion of the leaders, and he was given a s6at in Cabinet shortly' after. For a short spell he was out of office while the Labour Ministry held the reins, and he was welcomed back heartily on all hands in 1924, when Mr. Baldwin; after the General Election,- came back to power. When in the position of Secretary of. State for Air, Sir Samuel did his full share to bring the Royal Air Force- to the. remarkable all-round efficiency which now marks it. He married in 1909 Lady Mary '- Lygon, daughter of the sixth Earl Beauchamp.