The Sun TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1928. “THESE THINGS DO THE GENTILES SEEK”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 242, 3 January 1928, Page 8

The Sun TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1928. “THESE THINGS DO THE GENTILES SEEK”

A SLENDER list of titular rewards marks the bestowal of New **’ Year honours in New Zealand. And there will be no cavilling at or derision over the selection of recipients or the choice of distinctions. If there be a dearth of great men to whom honour is due, the political advisers of his Majesty have not thrown any honours away or guided the Royal favours to serve as rewards for “such services as courtiers render kings.” By far the best feature of this Dominion's honours list is the clear fact that the highest principles of public service, and not politics in any sense, have determined the direction and narrow scope of preferment. A knighthood has been conferred on a retired judge whose wise service in the administration of justice had earned national recognition and a distinctive reward. The public no less than the legal profession throughout the country will welcome Sir Walter Stringer as an estimable citizen whom the King has delighted to honour.

In recent years it has become an appreciable practice in the different States of the Empire to bestow Royal honours upon meritorious civil servants whose valuable work too often is not adequately recognised either in a popular sense or in a popular form. Thus, it is well that they should receive distinctive praise from the highest source of recognition in the Empire. It will therefore be noted with pleasure among the business community that the Comptroller of Customs, Mr. George Craig, has been admitted to a high Companionage. A similar honour has been conferred on Mr. Albert P. Ellis, New Zealand Commissioner on the British Phosphate Commission. To the general public this reward may seem an exaggerated compliment, but to those who know the excellent service Mr. Ellis has rendered New Zealand in the development of Nauru under mandatory control, the Companionship bestowed upon him is an honour well deserved. Elsewhere in the Empire some notable men, as well as several others less distinguished, have been remembered in high places. The British list will not evoke much adverse criticism. Political influence has not been very active. Indeed, it might he said that it is conspicuously absent. There certainly is no provocative cause for anything like a riotous outburst against the so-called traffic in titles. It cannot be said that the Government has exchanged an honour or any principles of its policy for substantial support of the party funds. A newspaper proprietor has been created a baronet apparently for the reason that he has now acquired a sufficient number of journals to make political opinion effective. Of course, he may have endowed something, but, so far, nothing in that form of good deeds has been disclosed. It is of special interest to note that General Sir Alexander Godley has been raised another step in knighthood. The honour proves conclusively that the lingering prejudice which exists against him in New Zealand is unknown at Home, where his merits as a distinguished soldier are recognised and appreciated. Four honours in the British list are outstanding. These are the rewards for disinterested service given to Sir Frederick Lugard, a soldier-administrator whose administrative record touches the best standard of statesmanship; to Sir Edward Grigg, the wise Governor of Kenya Colony; to Sir Edward Elgar and to Mr. Edward German, eminent musical composers. Sir Edward Elgar has just passed the Psalmist’s span, and enjoys, in the evening of his life, the knowledge that the nation reveres him for his art in which, “when he is not seeking God he is singing the praises of vigorous, healthy and triumphant England.” And a hail of appreciation will be sent across the Tasman to Sir John Longstaff, whose conscientious art has at last impressed Australian politicians.

THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS

THE recent reissue of the famous Greville Memoirs was rendered * more startling than it would otherwise have been by the appearance of a paragraph in which, seemingly, Queen Victoria (“not a bad-hearted woman, and kept in order by fear of her husband”) was recorded as being afraid that her husband would “poison her—of which he is very capable.” It was very soon explained that a most unhappy blunder had occurred, the accidental omission of another paragraph disguising the fact that not Queen Victoria and not the Prince Consort were referred to, but the Queen of Naples and her volatile husband King Ferdinand, whose whole-hearted delight in cannonading his subjects won him the name of King Bomba. A new edition was of course immediately announced, to supersede the other; hut the silliest mischief flies on the wings of the wind, too fast to be caught 'entirely and brought back, and the annoyance, if nothing else, is left.

Hardly anybody, it might be thought, could read the paragraph without realising that it was either a monstrous mistake or a monstrous calumny; but modern readers have been fed so grossly on malicious gossip and worse that some, at least, have lost all judgment and find it easier to swallow than to reject. The fact that every phrase in the paragraph is a wild contradiction of the unquestioned and unquestionable facts about the Queen and Prince Albert, the fact that the mere notion of Victoria’s going in fear and trembling of Albert the Good’s poisoning her is the height ot lunacy—even these facts would not prevent a certain kind of fool, not uncommon to-day, from nodding his head and saying that at any rate there “must be something in it.” But whether one person in a thousand or only one in a million or none at all is capable of believing or half-believing a story which really carried its own denial, it ought to be clear that, though the blunder which gave it thus misleadingly to the public is not a crime, as deliberate invention of such things is a crime, yet it is reprehensible in the extreme, the sort of blunder which simply should not occur. More persons than one are responsible for such a mistake, though the editor, a Mr. Wilson, bears the final responsibility; and this fact multiplies the carelessness manv times. A while ago a number of examples of reckless audacity in dealing with the names and reputations oi men and women, living or dead, shocked all who are still sensitive enough to be shocked; but it is doubtful whether the cool intention of the writers concerned was more to be blamed than is the casual inattention which puts a great Queen and her noble consort at the mercy of a copyist a