HIS OWN COUNTRY.

Shannon News, 26 April 1927, Page 2

HIS OWN COUNTRY.

PRIME MINISTER ON WOROESTER- - SHIRE. ' /<■ “ LONDON, February 22. Mr Baldwin, whe is first'president of the newly formed Worcestershire Association, was present with Mrs Baldr win at the inaugural banquet at the Hotel Victoria last night. Responding to the toast of. “The Prime Minister of Worcestershire and of Great Britain,” Mr. Baldwin sa ; <l they would not have thought it necessary to tell anyone about themselves - “Yesterday, however,’.’ he went on, “I was in conversation: with the Chancellor of the Exchequer—a man of wide culture and generous sympathies—and he observed to me that all he know about Worcestershire was that it produced sauce. He was evidently uaaware of the faet that long before he was born, Hardicanute sent iis -tax gatherers to Worcester and we murdered them. ” ■' ‘ HEART OF ALL Wl? LOVE. ’ ’ After touching on the history of Worcestershire and changes in the county, Mr Baldwin went on; “There abide there for all time two features — that nothing has altered snd nothing can alter. “To those who have been born in that valley and have hoped < o die in that valley, that river represents to us the heart and the core of all that we love. “In London I am a bird of passage, I own no house, I am a tenant, I live in a house from which I can be ejected any day4—(laughter)—without notice. “ When I look out of iny window 1 see nothing but the. Horse Guards parade, which reminds me of the general strike; the Foreign Office, which reminds me of Mr Chen; the India Office, which brings thoughts of Lord Birkenhead and the Swarajists (laughter); and the Admiralty and the Wav Office,'which remind me of the Estimates. * ‘ I think of what I ’ould see from my own garden in Worcestershire —the most beautiful view in England That is a£ circle of beauty which I defy any part of England to match. AN “ELIZABETHAN” SALUTE.

' One of the tragedies of progress was the way in which apt, racy speech redolent of the old England, was disappear ing in the ptocresq Of what for want of a better name it was agreed to call “education.”

.One day on his walk in the Wyre Forest, he met an old woman, who accosted himj with the salutation, which sounded to him Elizabethan and on which he defied modern educationists to improve: ‘ May, God, good will and good neighbourhood be yoiir company ” “What education could do that?” said Miy Baldwin. “Those of us who are wealthy send our sons to expensive private schools for four years, and,then perhaps for five or six years to Eton, and they finish up with three years at Christchurch.

“Will our sens say that to us?” - “No, they will probably say, ‘Pippip, toodeloo. ’ (Laughter.) I take my stand every time by the side of the illiterate and say ‘May God, good will and good- neighbourhood be your company. ” \