The dinner to Lord Samuel last Monday, his eightieth birthday,
was an abundantly merited tribute to a great man. His competence in different fields—politics, philosophy, rrietaphysics, administration —is so unobtrusive that his brilliance in some spheres is hardly appreciated as it should be ; if, for example, the speeches he makes in the House of Lords were delivered in the other place they would be hailed by Press and public 'alike as outstanding. The last surviving member of the great Liberal Cabinet of 1908 (with the not quite negligible exception of Mr. Churchill), Lord Samuel, was responsible for the Bill creating Probation Officers, for the attribution of the name Borstal to the institutions so styled, and—much more important—for the Children Bill which initiated the effective protection of child life. And it is still not generally recognised that (as he makes clear in his memoirs) it was his repre- sentations to Sir Edward Grey in 1914 which led ultimately to the Balfour declaration on a national home for the Jews in Palestine. in 1917.
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