1908 Birdwood, now a full colonel, held the position of chief staff-officer during the operations against the Mohmunds, for which he received the D.S.O., and he was a brigade-commander in India from 1909 to 1912. He had been promoted major-general in 1911; and in 1912, after holding for some months the position of quartermaster-general at Simla, he was appointed Secretary in the Army Department. Lord Kitchener in Dec. 1914 selected him for the command of the Australasian forces which were being assembled in Egypt, and in the following April he commanded the army corps from the Antipodes which carried out the memorable landing at Anzac. He was in charge of the troops clinging to this patch of the Gallipoli Peninsula until Aug., and he then directed the unsuccessful offensive that was attempted from it. His personality had made him much liked and respected by the Australasian troops. After the change that took place in the control of the Mediterranean field force in Oct., Birdwood (who had been awarded the K.C.M.G. and had been promoted lieutenant-general) assumed charge of the forces operating at the Dardanelles, and he carried out the very successful withdrawal of the troops from their dangerous positions in the following December and January. After a short period in Egypt he took his Australasian troops to the western front, and he commanded them there for two years; he was given the K.C.B. and promoted general in 1917. On the reconstitution of the V. Army after the great German effort of the spring of 1918 had been checked, Sir William Birdwood was selected to lead it, and his troops bore an important part in the last phases of the British advance in the autumn. For his services he was made a baronet and a G.C.M.G., besides receiving a grant of 10,000. He paid a visit to the Antipodes a year after the war and received a great welcome; in 1920 he took up command of the northern army in India.
BIRKENHEAD, FREDERICK EDWIN SMITH, 1st Viscount
(1872–), Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, the son of a
barrister, was born at Birkenhead July 12 1872, and was educated
at the local school, whence he proceeded with a classical
scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford. He gained a first
class in jurisprudence in 1895 and was Vinerian Law Scholar
in 1896, was elected a Fellow of Merton and did a considerable
amount of educational work in the next few years,
being a lecturer both at Merton and at Oriel, and an extension
lecturer in modern history both for Oxford and for Victoria
University. But his attention was mainly directed to law and
public life. He had been president of the Union at Oxford, and
he entered at Gray’s Inn, being called to the bar in 1899. He
went the northern circuit, and attached himself to the local bar
at Liverpool, where he rapidly obtained a considerable practice.
He also published a book on international law, which has gone
through several editions. He soon took a prominent place
among the Conservatives of Liverpool as a decided Tariff
Reformer, and was returned for the Walton division in Jan.
1906, holding the seat till his elevation to the Chancellorship in
1919. When he entered the House of Commons, he found
himself a member of a small and discouraged minority, who had
been soundly beaten at the general election, mainly on the
issues of tariff reform, Chinese labour in the Transvaal, and
religious education. He himself, though he had achieved considerable
local reputation, was practically unknown in London.
Within a week of the opening of Parliament he bounded into
fame by a sparkling maiden speech in a Tariff Reform debate a
speech conceived in a confident fighting spirit, calculated to
cheer dejected partisans, and full of wit and epigram. One of
his phrases went home, when he described the majority as
“begotten by Chinese slavery out of Passive Resistance.” Mr.
Lloyd George, who followed him in debate, spoke of the speech
as very brilliant; and the Conservative party hailed him at once
as a coming leader. He soon acquired a large practice at the
bar in London, took silk in 1908, and became a bencher of his
Inn. In Parliament, during the year of Opposition, he justified
the expectations formed of him, but incurred the animosity of
his opponents by the vehemence of his denunciation of ministerial
schemes. He was chosen to move the rejection of the
Parliament bill on the third reading in May 1911. In the crisis
which followed he took an extreme view, was prominent in the
disorderly proceedings when Mr. Asquith was refused a hearing
in the House of Commons, and threw in his lot with the “Die-hards.”
At the coronation in that year his growing reputation
in Parliament was recognized by his admission to the Privy
Council; and in 1912 he appeared as an acknowledged leader of
the party, moving the Opposition amendment to the Address,
and the rejection of the Welsh Disestablishment bill on second
reading. He showed, moreover, as a Liverpool man, his strong
sympathy with Ulster, threatened by the Home Rule bill; he
went over to Ireland and constituted himself Sir Edward
Carson’s principal lieutenant in the resistance which he was
organizing in North-East Ulster against Home Rule.
When the World War broke out, he was one of the first Opposition leaders to place his services at the disposal of the Government. He accepted the position of head of the Press Bureau, and in that capacity encouraged, with a view to accelerate enlistment, the publication in The Times of Aug. 30 1914 of a telegram showing the serious plight of the British army after the retreat from Mons. But he went shortly afterwards to France on active service, with the Indian Corps, and was mentioned in despatches. He was captain in the King’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars, and a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the army. When the first Coalition Ministry was formed in May 1915, he was appointed Solicitor-General and knighted, and he succeeded Sir Edward Carson in November as Attorney-General, a post he held till 1919. The Defence of the Realm Act and other war-time measures threw in these years a great burden of anxious work on the law officers of the Crown, including the prosecution of Sir Roger Casement for high treason at the Old Bailey. In the autumn of 1918 Sir Frederick Smith undertook a visit of propaganda to the United States, and published a book about it on his return. When Mr. Lloyd George reconstructed his Ministry after the general election of Dec. 1918, the Attorney-General was appointed Lord Chancellor and created a peer. The appointment, though quite in the normal course of promotion, was subjected to considerable criticism, owing partly to his comparative youth, but chiefly to his vehement partisanship in earlier years. But it was soon admitted (and notably by his colleagues on the judicial bench) to have been amply justified. Lord Birkenhead brought to the performance of his new duties the vigour which had always been characteristic of him; his judgments in the two final Courts of Appeal were weighty and lucid; and he quickly made himself a force in the Lords’ debates. His zeal for the efficient administration of justice caused him, in addition to his other heavy work, to sit during several weeks in the spring of 1921 as a judge of first instance, in order to clear off the enormous arrears in the Divorce Court. He was created a viscount on the King’s birthday in that year.
He married, in 1901, Margaret Eleanor, daughter of the Rev. Henry Furneaux, a well-known Oxford scholar, his family consisting of a son and two daughters. He was always a man of much physical activity, fond of a horse, of field sports and games, and of yachting.
BIRMINGHAM, GEORGE A., pen-name of James Owen
Hannay (1865–), Irish novelist and playwright, who was
born July 16 1865 at Belfast. He was educated at Haileybury
and Trinity College, Dublin, was ordained and became a
canon of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in 1912. He wrote amongst
other novels: The Seething Pot (1905); Spanish Gold (1908);
Lalage’s Lovers (1911); The Red Hand of Ulster (1912); The
Lost Tribes (1914) and Inisheeny (1920), whilst among his plays
the best known is General John Regan, which was successfully
produced at the Apollo theatre, London, in Jan. 1913.
BIRMINGHAM, England (see 3.983). During 1910–21 the city of Birmingham greatly increased in size and importance. The primary cause of its growth in area was the extension of the municipal boundaries by a local Act of Parliament, though
manufacturing enterprise and industrial developments before the World War, as well as the extraordinary influx of munition
