BYNG OF VIMY

Hokitika Guardian, 1 November 1928, Page 8

BYNG OF VIMY

HOLDJXG THIC LONDON FRONT

COMMAND OF POLICE FORCE. <

Viscount Byng, of Yimy, tlie famous commander of tlie Canadians in France and former Viceroy of Canada, lias tackled a good many queer .joli.s in his career, hut none so queer

as the command of London’s 20,000 police in a period of historic transition.

The .ioh is bigger than it sounds. In fact, the Home Secretary, JoynsonHicks, maintained in the face of a. Parliamentary storm that Dyne was the only man in sight, to handle if. And probably; he was right, for H.vng is an interesting psychological study and a most unusual man.

Ho was living the peaceful life of a rotirod. soldier on his modest demesne at Thorpe le Roken, a little Essex village, when the notorious Money-Rav-idgo pettiiig-in-the-park ease sent

train spluttering through Parliament and the press, and excluded a largesized mine under Scotland Yard and its chief, the former army provost marshal-general. Sir William florwood. The opening picture is worth etehing. An uniisuaHv fine night in spring. Hyde Park, with its celebrated tan horse ride, its fountains, avenues, statues, pools. bird and rabbit sanctuaries. lies dreaming under the blue (Glider skv, just aeross the road from the western wall of the King’s hack garden. One would have said that the lights had been specially dimmed and thinned out by a romantic citv council to favour lovers' talks and caresses.

Tnto this enchanted park at the witching hour of 9.30 p.m., having 'lined tete-a-tete at a discreet little restaurant, stoll Sir T/h> Aloney, not■><l economist (married) and a pretty blonde. Irene Savidtre ('spinster), and sit on a secluded bench to talk of this and that. Here the picture should fade out.. Tint the action is unexpectedly carried on bv two members of the plain clothes ■patrol. who, middling along on the lookout for trouble, perceive the elderly anan and the young girl in what flmv subsequently swear to he a highly indelicate (posture, warranting instant arrest. The sequel may he given succinctly in three phases:— Phase I. A rrost the a foresa i d collide. Acquittal by magistrate, who doubts uncorroborated police evidence. Leaders in press, questions in Parliament.. Police commissioner’s inquire and contemplated prosecution of the two policemen for perjury. Director of Public Prosecution, directed bv Mom? .Secretary, orders Scotland Yard inspector to get statements preliminary to framing charge. Phase —Scotland A’ard detective'--call for Irene Savidge at her place of business and carry her ofT to the Yard in a fast ear, and there interrogate her for live hours—at times indelicately. she subsequently alleges. Her father goes to the Mouse of (’ominous, gels hold of a Socialist member in lieu of the Tory member he wants tolls him what has happened and said member gels up and tells Parliament all about it. Electric effect! For once Socialist and Tory share a common indignation. This is the notorious third degree! Abo a clear infringement by the police of Ihe 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 the police commissioner of the metropolis down, before their report can he published the commissioner resigns, and the Home Secretary has to admit that the police are conducting a sort of pas-

sive strike by r(*fnsi to make arrests in the park—the usual average is forty a month-*—with the result that the nark will become, a “scandal to civilisation.”

The world, roadinsi the story throticdr the cabled day-to-day reports, laughs. England laughs. But iTemier Baldwin. his Home Secretary and the Tory party leaders do not laugh, for they recognise that the laugh of the nation is a sour one, lacking real mirth. T bcv realise that if something is not dpno onieklv to reassure the island race, jealous of its. liberties, and sweeten the relations between police and public, there will he trouble in the party, and a gust, of passion in the country that will swing millions of yotes into the enemy camp at the coming general election. They know that on an »"sue of r>oilcp versus the people the blitter will win. and they know that if the police fi>ol they are being made scapegoats in this silly business the sluicegates tlmt bold back tb n criminal underworld will slip open and the present figures of l°.'\o{yi major crimes and 100 murders n>’- -minim wifi show a increase. Rvng of Vimy is Dm practical solution of this complicated politicoooPcn problem. His job is to “ rejns'hre ” the police.

Tfo b-is to hold the po i: ce fort while a roval commission, with the Earl oF Hording. Indian Viceroy, and once Hrilish Ambassador to Washington, in the chair, investigates: the whole police system and frames its report. Viscount Bvng had earned the repose he was taking when lie was called out of retirement to head London’s police. His active soldierin'” life covers the British campaigns of forty years. He had his first taste of steel and lead charging at the head of h's cavalry troop against the Dervishes of the Sudan, hack in 18*4. The hov subaltern of that day developed into the man who manoeuvred the 300.008 of the Third British Army in the

fiinal operations which smashed' the great Miudeiihurg line, and with it the iron German back, in 1918. Then there was that memorable viceroyalty 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 cornered clash between Tory leader. Liberal leader and GovernorGenera!.

A patrician, seventh son ot the Scottish Earl of Stratford, blue-eyed, tall, with a body of whipcord and steel, he owes his rise to merit, lie has survived searching tests and achiqved a unique prestige. lie is. incidentally, about the only general in England who does not possess Hie military mind—with its notable defects in the civil sphere.

Tie was twenty-one when he drank his first, toast to “'flic* King! ” in old port in I lie mess of the 1 Oth Hussars, one of Ihe crack regiments:; twontv-two when he embarked for the Sudan war with the force hound to avenge the murder of “Chinese” Gordon at Khartoum ; and Ihirly-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 C9'X) and a paternal or avuncular inheritance or allowance (or a rich .wife) and live happily ever after in a good limiting country. But Byng was set upon a career. He had done lino work. Tie had youth, energy, ambition, purpose, and little beyond his pay. Tit came home, broke away from the regiment dead end bv way ol the command-of a cavalry school, and al forty-three got his brigade and his first step in the world ol general officers.

Byng in 1912 got the command in Egvnt where Kitchener was England s viceroy; and it was in the oommand-er-in-chiel’s big, cool house in (aiio, two years later, that he heard the first rumbling echoes of the war.

He was too good a man fo he leiL in the Egyptian theatre. Kitchener summoned him home: and. in command of a cavalry division, ho was a tower of strength to that first little British :armv that, retreated from Alnns. stood on the Yores line, and after tremendous fighting held the old cloth town.

Byng was “blooded” as an infantry general in the Gallipoli campaign of *ls. It was wild and desecrate work, clinging to the toes of * that damned peninsula.” as the Westerners, who hated Winston Churchill’s Dardanelles strategy, called it. But B.vug did well and presently returned to the Flanders front with a new order (Knight Commander of the Bath) and jump in rank to lieutenant-gen-eral.

Tll >the late spring of ’lO came his big chance. The Canadians needed a commander of a special .type. A formal man was no good. A spil-and-polisli general would break their hearts. They required a loader who was at once physically impressive, able, strong, a firm disciplinarian, and yet a man who could capture their hearts and imaginations, a general, besides, who would not “get the goat” of the- cit izen ofli> e‘">.

The war chiefs Look council nod chose Bvng.

Bvng was a success. Ihe Canadians admired his robust physique and (he “no damn nonsense” air about him. They liked his blue glance, like a sword thrust, his calm deliberation in a crisis and the broad smile into which his blunt, stern Nordic face so easily crumpled. Also they liked his knack of leading them to victory alter victory.

For his part Byng. a cavalryman, understood these Canadians, a 'Wilder crowd than the '.British troops he had always been accustomed to, less ■amenable to discipline, men with more dash hut less dour obstinacymagnificent storm troops, at thcii best in the assault.

He never made a. mistake with them. And lie earned them the admiration of the entire Allied lorees by the operation which resulted in the storming of Vimy Bulge, the tremendous bastion from which Byng takes his title name, the most glorious of all the Canadians’ exploits in 1> ranee. The feat won Byng, hitherto a corps commander, command of the Third British Army, incorporating the Canadian Corps.

He heiiped (to break through the German line in September, and after the war went over to Canada, where he .made a.n immensely popular Gov-ernor-General.