Word: birkenhead
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...polite tempest of gossip and denial that the great Earl of Birkenhead would resign as Secretary of State for India was finally stilled, last week, when he, burly, brilliant and socially lionized, despatched to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin a lengthy letter. Suave, it concluded: "The moment of parting is always sad. Your own personality has converted a Cabinet which assembled upon the crater of some bitter and recent memories into a band of brothers. I leave them and you with emotion and, if I may be allowed to say so, with affection."-Birkenhead...
Reason: money-it being notorious that the pay of a Cabinet Minister* has proved too meager to support the extravagant whims* of Lord Birkenhead, who was. before he took Cabinet rank, "the highest feed barrister in England...
...supposed to be a mystery to his U. S. publishers-a mystery not cleared up by U. S. reviewers of the book up to last week-it is becoming well known among London literatti that "Ephesian" is Mr. Bechofer Roberts, a distinguished part-time secretary to the Earl of Birkenhead; one of the great men whom he has biographed. Since Lord Birkenhead was famed as Mr. "F. E." Smith before his elevation, and since "Ephesian," when pronounced, sounds like " 'F. E.' sian," it was supposed for a time that the noble Earl had himself penned these two books...
These polished words of Lord Birkenhead-typical of his youth as a smart lawyer named F. E. Smith-were flatly contradicted by Dictator Mussolini thus: "The oft-repeated platitude that somewhere in every strong man there is the influence of a woman, is a woven fancy. That there is a feminine 'power behind the throne' is a flimsy tissue of the imagination. No woman ever has been the dominant influence in a strong man's life...
Fascist Mussolini seemingly did not conceive that his ardent words could give offense; but Anti-Fascist Birkenhead, conscious that his icy logic must have offended, threw a concluding sop to women: "Though a woman may not take a revealed part in the conduct of affairs, we need not fall into the error of supposing that she has no influence in deciding them. ... I can make my meaning more easily understood by repeating a remark made by the Duchess of Burgundy to Madame de Maintenon. 'Do you know,' she said, 'why the queens of England have ruled...