3 JANUARY 1920, Page 11

Lord Midleton, who receives a double step in the United

Kingdom Peerage, was Secretary for War for two years in Mr. Belfries Goireilenent, and was also Secretary for Ireland for three years. He was, of course, leader of the Southern Union- ists-hi-the Irish Convention, when the Southern Unionists, for

the most part very reluctantly, consented to try to agree with the Nationalists upon a form of Home Rule because Mr. Lloyd George urged that an Irish settlement was essential to the proper prosecution of the war. As we all know, the Hierarchy put its spoke in the wheel at the last moment, as it always has done, and produced the inevitable failure. Thus failure was secured quite apart from the natural dislike of the proposed scheme expressed by the Ulster Unionists. Lord Midleton is one of those who have inherited the belief that unceasing labour for the State is a duty. He has never spared himself, and has always done all that was in him to maintain the' very highest and most honourable standard of public life.