26 OCTOBER 1918, Page 3

The memory of the late Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, who as

British Ambassador at Washington in the early and critical years of the war rendered his country an immeasurable service, will be kept green -at Eton and Balliol. His old school on Saturday last paid him the rare diatinotion of affixing his stall-plate in the College Chapel. The inscription records that " when at length he had allied the Americans with us against the Germans he died happy " ; but his harder task was to smooth away difficulties when our naval blockade began to take effect. The late Ambassador's connexion with Balliol is to be maintained by a fund, raised by Mr. J. P. Morgan and other American Mends, which will provide for Lady Spring-Rice, and her children until they reach the age of thirty-five, and will then revert to the College, to found travelling scholarships for budding diplomatists. We feel instinctively that the British

Government ought to have assumed the maintenance of the widow of the admirable diplomatist to whom Great Britain owes so muoh.

But we admire none the less the thoughtful kindness that prompted this American gift and the graceful courtesy with which the gift was made. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice had spent so much of his life abroad that he was probably far better known in Washington than in London.