CRIPPLED AND POOR

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 62, 6 December 1937, Page 4

CRIPPLED AND POOR

Member of British War Cabinet NOT EVEN A PENSION In the sun on the verandah of a villa on Herne Hill, London, where he haB lived for more than 30 years, the Daily Sketch found one of the five members of the Inner Cabinet who ruled Britain during the Great War. Mr. G. N. Barnes, Privy Councillor and one timo great trade union leader, was not only in Mr. Lloyd George's War Cabinet, but was one of the five British plenipotentiaries to the Peace Conference which made history. He is now near his 79th birthday With resourccs most people would consider scanty, he is still profoundly concerned over world and Empire affairs. In front of him was a manuscript ou which he was busy. It was headed: "Versailles and After." "I am just baclc from France," h« said, "and I'm a bit of a cripple,. ?o 1 can't get up from my chair. I had a fall • in my bedroom and had to ba brought back from a conference in connection with the new Commonwealth Society which aims to put an international police force behind the League of Nations. "The one thing to keep one alive ij to look to the future. "I qonfess I am not very hopeful at present. Most Of the things for which I worked during and after the war have gone wrong. We may achieve something, but, I am afraid, not in my time. We have let the League of Nations down and the world is in a bad way. "It is on reeora that when the League was founded I pointed to the possibility of its failure. We should • have seen to it that every nation signLng the covenant would pass its own legislation to fulfil the obligations that followed." Mr. Barnes has nover recovered from being run down by a taxi in London four years ago. It left him shaky and • liabl'e to falls. "Surely you have an ex-Minister's pension?" the Daily Sketch asked, " You were one of the five leaders in the days of crisis.""It 'was talked of," Mr. Barnes replied," "but nothing came of it. I believe you are supppsed to serve foui years in a Cabinet to claim a pension. I was in it only for something over three years." t