SIR FRANCIS HUMPHRYS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 787, 7 October 1929, Page 9

SIR FRANCIS HUMPHRYS

NEW POSITION FOR HERO OF AFGHAN REVOLT HIGH COMMISSIONER IN IRAQ British Official Wireless Reed. 11 a.m. RUGBY, Sunday. The King has approved of the appointment of Sir Francis Henry Humphrys to be High Commissioner for Iraq, in succession to the late Sir Gilbert Clayton. Sir Francis was until recently the British Minister at Kabul. It will be recalled that he was the last British subject to leave Kabul by airplane on February 25, when he arrived at Peshawar with the Union Jack of the legation under his arm. He had previously organised,, in concert with the Royal Air Force, the evacuation by air of the British and foreign residents in Kabul. The spirit in which he confronted the perils and responsibilities imposed upon him by the Afghan revolution, during which the Legation was isolated and subjected to heavy fire, was the subject of many tributes, including one by Sir Austen Chamberlain, who in the House of Commons expressed the admiration of the Government “for the courage and fortitude which Sir Francis Humphrys and his staff displayed in circumstances of great difficulty and danger.”