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Arbiter & Wit. At about this time Lord Birkenhead delivered his memorable knife thrust at the late Viscount Younger of Leckie (then Sir George Younger) who fancied himself for the Prime Ministry. "Since the day when the proverbial frog swelled itself up in rivalry with the bull until it burst," he said in part, "no frog ever has been in such grave physical danger as Sir George Younger." Of the Bonar Law Cabinet in 1923 Lord Birkenhead said: "They remind me of the Duke of Wellington's observation upon his generals: 'I don't know whether they will frighten the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me! ' "
This sort of wit had made Lord Birken head a social lion, furthered his progress to the rank of No. i British arbiter of old brandy, sped him to the bridge tables of tycoons whose money he took by excellence in play.
Two legal monuments will survive the great Lord Chancellor: i) his masterly modernization of a great body of archaic statutes, enacted as the "Law of Property Act of 1922" ; 2) the Constitution of the Irish Free State which he worked out with Michael Collins and to which he contributed the ingenious "Oath of Fealty," having discovered that Irish Parliamen tarians would choke rather than swear an oath of allegiance to George V. Matter of fact fealty implies a lower grovel than allegiance.
Master of India & Tycoon. To the great grief of political rivals, who had thought Lord Birkenhead would quietly retire like most Lord Chancellors when his term expired, he rushed back to stumping for the Conservative Party. Grateful for such dynamic aid, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, lazy, muddling, made him Secretary of State for India in the last Conservative Cabinet (TIME, Nov. 10, 1924 et seq.).
Never did a Government stand in such need of "first class brains"; but the Earl was never worse cast than in his new role. To Birkenhead's cold, precise, savage legal mind Indian statesmen with their loose, mystic reasoning from aspiration and intuition were mere weaklings, chuckleheads, loons. By his arrogance to the meekest people on earth he sowed resentment wide and deep, possibly is most to blame for the present fierce sprouting of St. Gandhi's movement in more virulent form than ever before. (The Earl himself blamed James Ramsay MacDonald's "wishy-washy milk-and-mushiness!") He resigned as Secretary of State for India some months before the Baldwin Cabinet's overthrow (TIME, Oct. 29, 1928), excusing himself for quitting the sinking Conservative ship by brazenly asserting that his scale of luxurious living demanded more than a Cabinet Minister's pay (£5,000: $24,300).