TRUSTED ENVOY LOST

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 766, 12 September 1929, Page 9

TRUSTED ENVOY LOST

SIR GILBERT CLAYTON DIES IN IRAQ HONOURED BY - EAST AND WEST (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (United Service) Reed. 12.26 p.m. LONDON, Wed. Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton, British High Commissioner for Iraq, has died, at the age of 54. Sir Gilbert Clayton, K.C.M.G., K.8.E., C. 8., last year succeeded Sir Henry Dobbs as High Commissioner for Iraq. He entered the Army in 1895, and served during the greater part of a distinguished career in Egypt. He was with the Nile Expedition of 1898, was Director of Intelligence in Egypt from 1914 to 1917, and was chief political adviser to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force for the two following years. During the Great War he was seven times mentioned in dispatches, after which he was appointed adviser to the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior, a position he occupied from 1919 to 1922, when he was appointed Chief Secretary to the Government of Palestine, a post he continued to occupy until 1925. He conducted the negotiations in 1927 between the British Government and Ibn Saud, King of the Hedjaz, regarding Wahabi tribesmen’s raids into Iraq. His experience gained while Sudan Agent in Cairo and in an advisory capacity to various Eastern Governments enabled him to gather a great (leal of inside information into Middle Eastern and Persian affairs, which led to his appointment as a special envoy on several later occasions, such as when he waited on King Hussein of the Hedjaz. the Zaidi Imam Yahya, of Sana* in the Yemen, and the Wahabi King of Nejd, with each of whom he signed up some sort of agreement whic h has helped to maintain peace in the. East. He has had many Eastern honours conferred upon him, including that of the Order of Osmanieh, the Medjidie, and the Grand Cordon of the Nile.