TALES CONCERNING OVERSEA PREMIERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1038, 2 September 1911, Page 4

TALES CONCERNING OVERSEA PREMIERS.

Many queer tales have been told concerning the oversea Premiers during their stay in England (says a Loudon correspondent). There was one concerning Mr Andrew Fisher (Commonwealth Premier), who relused to embark on a certain vessel to see the Naval Review because there were coloured seamen employed on board; another about a certain Premier who uuwittiugly won the ardent admiration ot “a most importunate person of the female sex” to his own great embarrassment ; of another whose fleeting references to one ot his colony’s primary industries resulted in his rooms being cumbered with stacks of raw, refined and “emulsioued” samples of certain fish oil ; and a hair-raising tale of how another Prime Minister was guarded, waking and sleeping, wherever he went, by a couple of Scotland Yard’s most trusty minims, lest the assassin’s hand should cut short his days. Joking apart, a story is going the round of Fleet, street that Scotland Yard kept special watch and ward over the Prime Minister or New Zealand

from the moment he landed In the Old Country till he embarked at Marseilles. The reason for this is said to be that a certain man, alleged to be a disappointed New Zealand litigant, had threatened to “do Ward in” whilst Sir Joseph was at Home, and that the utterer of the threat was known to be in England, and was actually staying at one of the hotels contiguous to the Cecil during the Coronation, but afterwards disappeared. How much of the tale as told in Fleet street is true it is, of course, impossible to say, but the allegation that Sir Joseph Ward was the object of some solicitude on the part of Scotland Yard does seem to have some foundation in fact.