OBITUARY
OF
EMINENT PERSONS DECEASED IN 1914.

JANUARY.

Viscount Cross.—The Rt. Hon. Richard Assheton Cross, G.C.B., died at Eccle Riggs, Broughton-in-Furness, on January 8, aged 90. The third s. of William Cross and Ellen, dau. of Edward Chaffers, he was b. near Preston, May 30, 1823, educated at Rugby under Arnold, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and called to the Bar by the Inner Temple. He went the Northern Circuit, acquired a considerable practice, and sat for Preston as a Conservative from 1857 to 1862, when he resigned for business reasons. In 1868 he was selected to contest South-West Lancashire against Gladstone, whom he defeated by a substantial majority; and when Disraeli formed his Ministry in 1874 he was recommended by the Earl of Derby for the Home Secretaryship—a post for which he was qualified by his practical knowledge of poor-law administration and his experience as Chairman of the South-West Lancashire Quarter Sessions. (He had also directed the affairs of an important bank.) As Home Secretary he introduced and passed a number of useful measures conceived in a liberal spirit, and fulfilling the promise of his party to take up social reform. The Employers and Workmen Act (1875), based on the Report of a Royal Commission, treated breaches of contract by workmen as civil wrongs, not as crimes, and restricted the dangerous extension given by judicial decisions to the law of conspiracy in regard to trade disputes, besides permitting peaceful picketing during a strike. The Artisans' Dwellings Act (1875) enabled the corporation in towns of more than 25,000 inhabitants to acquire land compulsorily for workmen's dwellings and build them itself, or let the land for building. Another Act (1876) restricted the enclosure of commons; in 1877 the Prisons Acts (one for each kingdom) transferred the management of County jails from local justices to a central authority, and two useful Acts followed, a Factories and Workshops Act (1898) and a Summary Jurisdiction Act (1879). In 1880 his proposal that the London Water Companies' undertakings should be transferred to a Central Public Board for a price of 27,000,000l., payable in stock at 3½ per cent., was severely criticised, and was cut short by the dissolution. On the retirement of Mr. Disraeli's Ministry he was made a G.C.B., and he took a prominent part among the Opposition; but Lord Randolph Churchill had conceived a violent dislike to him, Mr. W. H. Smith, and Sir Stafford Northcote; and though in 1885 he again became Home Secretary, in the Marquess of Salisbury's Government, in 1886 he was made Secretary for India. In the Salisbury Ministry of 1895 he was Lord Privy Seal, and retired on its reconstruction in 1900. He was a F.R.S. and an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, and was one of the most trusted business agents of Queen Victoria. He m., 1852, Georgiana, dau. of Thomas Lyon; she d. 1907, leaving a family; he was succeeded by his grandson. He was among the ablest administrators of the Unionist party of his time.

Lord Strathcona.—The Rt. Hon. Donald Alexander Smith, first Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., and a Privy Councillor, died in London on January 21, aged 93. B. at Forres, it was believed on August 6, 1820, the s. of Alexander Smith by his wife Barbara, dau. of Donald Stewart of Leanchoil, he was the nephew of John Stewart, a famous fur-trader, through whose influence he entered the Hudson Bay Company's service in 1838. He spent thirteen years continuously at Hamilton Bay, Labrador, almost cut off from civilisation, and then served at various posts in North-Western Canada, rising step by step till, in 1869, he became the last resident Governor of the Company. During the rebellion of Louis Riel in the Red River region (afterwards Manitoba) in 1869-70 he was acting governor, and negotiated successfully with the insurgents. He was Chief Commissioner of the North-Western Territory in 1870, represented Winnipeg and St. John in the Manitoba Legislature, 1871-74, Selkirk in the Dominion Parliament between 1871 and 1877, and West Montreal, 1877-96. From 1896 to his death he was High Commissioner for Canada in London. During the Pacific railway scandal of 1873 he went over to the Liberal party, but he supported the Macdonald Ministry from its formation in 1878. In that year he and other financiers connected Winnipeg by rail with Minnesota, and in 1880 they contracted to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway by 1891. It was finished by the end of 1885, and he may be regarded as the chief agent in its completion. He was made K.C.M.G. in 1886, G.C.M.G. in 1896, raised to the Peerage 1897, and became G.C.V.O. in 1908. He wrote a book on "Western Canada before and after Confederation," and a "History of the Hudson Bay Company." His benefactions were enormous. At the Queen's Jubilee of 1887 he and Lord Mount Stephen gave $1,000,000 to build and endow the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, adding in 1896 $800,000 for upkeep. To the McGill University, Montreal, he gave altogether over a million dollars; in 1896 he endowed the Royal Victoria College for Women at Montreal, and during the Boer War he raised a regiment of scouts, equipping it and transporting it to South Africa at his own cost. Other benefactions were $450,000 to promote physical drill and military training in the schools of Canada, $1,000,000 to King Edward's Hospital Fund, $150,000 for new buildings for the Young Men's Christian Association in the Canadian North-West, and $125,000 to Marischal College, Aberdeen. He was a Vice-President of the British Association, a F.R.S., Chancellor of Aberdeen University, of which he had been Lord Rector in 1899, and held numerous honorary degrees. He m. Isabella, dau. of Richard Hardisty; she d. 1913, and left one dau., Margaret, who m., 1888, Robert Howard, F.R.C.S., and had three sons and two daughters. His Barony passed by special remainder to her and her issue. For his action in securing oil fuel for the Navy, see p. [124].

Lord Knutsford.—The Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Thurston Holland, G.C.M.G., first Lord Knutsford, died at his London residence on January 29, aged 88. The son of Sir Henry Holland, Queen Caroline's physician, he was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, went to the Bar, was legal adviser to the Colonial Office, 1867-70, and Assistant Under-Secretary for the Colonies, 1870-74; in 1874 he was elected for Midhurst to Parliament as a Conservative, and represented it till its disfranchisement in 1885, and Hampstead, 1885-88. In 1885 he became Financial Secretary to the Treasury in Lord Salisbury's Ministry, and shortly afterwards Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, an office to which he was again appointed in the second Salisbury Ministry (1886). From 1887 to 1892 he was Colonial Secretary, thus being Parliamentary Chief of the Department in which he had been a permanent official. In 1888 he was raised to the Peerage as a Baron, and on the formation of Lord Salisbury's third Ministry in 1895 a Viscount. Thereafter he practically retired from active politics. As Colonial Secretary, he presided over the Colonial Conference of 1887. He was an Ecclesiastical Commissioner and a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. He m. (1), 1852, Elizabeth, dau. of Nathaniel Hibbert; she d. 1855; (2) 1858, Margaret, dau. of Sir C. E. Trevelyan, Bart.; she d. 1906. He was succeeded by his eldest son.

Sir David Gill, K.C.B., F.R.S., the eminent astronomer, died in London, January 24, aged 70. B. June 12, 1843, the son of an Aberdeenshire gentleman, and educated at Marischal College and Aberdeen University, he was in charge of a private observatory at Aberdeen, 1868-73, then of the Earl of Crawford's observatory at Dunecht, 1873-76. In 1874 he organised the expedition sent by Lord Crawford to Mauritius to observe the transit of Venus, and in 1877 that sent to Ascension to determine the solar parallax by observations of Mars. From 1879 to 1907 he was Astronomer Royal in Cape Colony, and in that capacity he observed the transit of Venus in 1882 and photographed the comet of that year. He also initiated the cataloguing of the stars by the aid of photography, and proposed and carried out (in 1896) the geodetic survey of Natal and Cape Colony, and organised, a year later, that of Rhodesia. Twenty years earlier he had established the base line for that of Egypt. He was elected F.R.S. in 1883, and made K.C.B. in 1900. In 1878 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1903 a Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He was President of the British Association, 1907-8; of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1909-11; and of the Institute of Marine Engineers, 1910-11; and possessed honorary degrees and other scientific distinctions.

General Picquart, one of the leading figures of the Dreyfus case and War Minister of France, 1906-9, d. January 19, at Amiens, aged 59. A brilliant infantry officer, he was promoted Lieut.-Colonel 1896, and became Chief of the Intelligence Department of the Ministry of War, but coming to the opinion that Major Dreyfus had been wrongly convicted, he was relieved of his post and sent in disgrace to Tunis. On the prosecution of Esterhazy he was recalled to Paris, and subsequently was dismissed the service, after again affirming his belief during M. Zola's trial. In July, 1898, for declaring that a document which the War Minister held to be authentic was forged, he was imprisoned for eleven months; but, from his prison and after his release, he took an active part in the revision of the Dreyfus case. In 1906 he was restored to the army as Brigadier-General, promoted Major-General soon after, and from 1906 to 1909 was War Minister; he reorganised and strengthened the artillery, and carried out other important reforms, including the application of the two years' service law. He commanded the Second Army Corps from 1910 till his death, and was at the head of one of the armies in the manœuvres in Picardy in 1910. An honourable man of high culture and refinement, he wrecked his career in the interest of truth, and his courage at last received its due reward.

Francis de Pressensé, one of the most eminent French journalists and men of letters of his time, died of apoplexy in Paris, January 19, aged 60. The son of M. Edmond de Pressensé, a Protestant pastor and Life Senator, and of Mme. Elise de Pressensé, née Duplessis-Goncourt, a Swiss and a novelist, he won high distinction at school, alike in literature, language, history and mathematics, and at seventeen was English correspondent of the Journal de Genève. Before this he had been attached to General Chanzy's staff in the Franco-German War, and was taken prisoner at Le Mans. A brilliant Greek scholar, he contemplated a work on the constitutional history of Athens, but was gradually drawn to politics, partly by his relations with Guizot and Thiers; and, after being one of M. Bardoux's secretaries at the Ministry of Public Instruction, he entered the diplomatic service, and served at Constantinople and, as first Secretary of Embassy, at Washington. Returning to France, he became a journalist, working on the République Française and the Temps, but illness interrupted his work, and it was only in July, 1888, that he definitely became Foreign Editor of the Temps, a post which he occupied till the Dreyfus crisis, which made him a Socialist. His wide knowledge of languages and current politics gave his work high authority; and, though Protestant by extraction and creed, he was specially attracted by English Catholicism, particularly by Cardinal Manning and Cardinal Newman, whom he regarded as called to solve the problems of Labour. He published a notable study of the former, and a work on Irish Home Rule. During the Dreyfus case he resigned from the Legion of Honour on M. Zola's suspension, and was struck off its roll, resignation being forbidden; he wrote a eulogy of General Picquart; and he took a leading part in promoting the movement for a revision of the sentence, and was compelled to leave the Temps. He was President of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, 1904-14. In 1902 he was elected Socialist deputy for the Rhone; and his Bill for the separation of Church and State formed the basis of that ultimately passed by M. Briand, to which he carried an important amendment. In 1910 he was defeated at the general election, and had not since been a deputy, though he was a candidate for a Paris seat at his death. His erudition, his earnestness, and his political achievements made him one of the most notable figures of contemporary France.

Paul Déroulède, French poet, soldier, and patriot, died at Nice on January 30, aged 67. B. at Paris on September 2, 1846, he studied law, but his taste was for poetry and the drama, and he had produced a short play before 1870, when ha enlisted as a Zouave (finding that the regiment of Gardes Mobiles with which he had gone out during MacMahon's retreat on Sedan was to be disbanded), was taken prisoner, and confined in Silesia. Escaping, he took part in the campaigns of the Loire and the East, was wounded near Paris, and ultimately forced to retire from service by a fall from his horse. Meanwhile he had written his "Chants du Soldat" (pub. 1872), which instantly became popular. In 1882 he was invited by Félix Faure to join a patriotic movement independent of party, and founded the "Ligue des Patriotes"; but it was captured by the Boulangist movement. He had stood as an independent candidate at the general election of 1885; and he was elected deputy for Angoulême in 1889. The collapse of Boulangism, however, did not involve his retirement from active politics; he was extremely active in the campaign against Dreyfus, and on February 23, 1899, after President Faure's funeral, he publicly adjured General Roget to lead his troops to the Elysée in order to save France and the Republic. The invitation was contemptuously declined, and though tried for conspiracy and acquitted he was again arrested in 1900 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, which was merged in the additional penalty of ten years' exile for insulting President Loubet. He retired to San Sebastian, and returned after the amnesty of 1905, but he failed to re-enter the Chamber, and his political career was at an end. He continued however, to propagate militant patriotism by his writings, and a volume of "Nouvelles Feuilles de Route" appeared in 1907. He was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.