The Viscount Burnham, G.C.M.G., C.H., T.D., and the Right Hon. the Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G., P.C.

BY the death of the Viscount Burnham, G.C.M.G., C.H., T.D., on 20th July last, and the death of the Right Hon.

the Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G., P.C., on 7th September, the Institution has lost two of its most distinguished vice-presidents.

When Lord Burnham became a vice-president in 1923 he had already shown his interest in the work of the Institution. He presided at the annual meeting in 1920, and there he recalled that it was " one of the proudest recollections and traditions of the paper with which he was associated," the Daily Telegraph, that it was among the first to " draw attention to the high service and splendid record of the Institution and those who serve it." By his personal support, and by the constant and generous support of the newspaper which for so many years he owned and directed, Lord Burnham gave invaluable help to the Institution, which will always be gratefully remem- bered.

The Institution was represented at his funeral by Major A. D. Burnett Brown, M.C., the deputy-secretary.

Lord Grey of Fallodon.

Lord Grey of Fallodon became a vice-president in 1930, and he was generously ready to give the Institution the great help of his presence and support at life-boat functions in his own county of Northumberland. His last public appearance for the life-boat service was at the inaugural ceremony of the Boulmer motor life-boat in September, 1931, when, on behalf of the Institution, he presented the life- boat to the branch. Six years, before Lord Grey had taken part in the centenary celebrations at Boulmer, and, in a memorable speech, had paid a tribute to the Institution's work and the voluntary spirit by which it is maintained. It is right that in this last tribute to his own work for the life-boat service those words should be recalled.

We have had in this country, as we ought to have, an efficient organization all around our coast for extending help to those who may be shipwrecked. That has been done in a manner so efficient and so public-spirited that we are rightly proud of it. It has been done without any pecuniary assistance from the Government, without any organization from the Government. It has been done by the pervading local energy and public spirit.

It has been done, in other words, by private enterprise and voluntary service. . . . The British Empire does not owe its existence to Government agency, but to the unofficial enterprise and energy of the British people; and the Royal National Life-boat Institution is pre-eminently one of those things which has been efficiently done, and which, I trust, will always be done by local effort and voluntary service. . . . It is being done with a maximum of harmony and good-will and good spirit among all connected with it. ... If only we could have through all national affairs, and through all international affairs, that sort of spirit which distinguishes the life-boat service —all people feeling that in the interest of common humanity what they needed most to-day was to help each other—then instead of fighting each other the peoples of the world would very nearly have approached the millennium.

The Institution was represented at the memorial service to Lord Grey, held in Westminster Abbey, by Lieut.- Col. C. R. Satterthwaite, O.B.E., its secretary, and at the memorial service in St. Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle, by Captain W. J. Oliver, M.C., organizing secretary for the North-East of England..