New Year's Honors

On Jan. 1, 1929, there lay at Buckingham Palace: 1) In a drawer the so-called New Year's honors list; 2) In a bed the King-Emperor. Last week His Majesty was deemed sufficiently recovered for the honors list to be published, exactly as originally drawn up.

Of the three persons designated to receive a peerage one has died in the meantime. No matter. The dead man's son, Urban R. Broughton, will receive that to gain which his late, rich father, Urban H. Broughton, perpetrated so many philanthropies--including the donation of Ashridge Park to the nation.

Doubtless one or more of the doctors who saved the life of George V will eventually be honored--but not this time. The only doctor to receive a peerage last week is Sir Berkeley Moynihan, president of the Royal College of Surgeons. A coincidence of the week was that three days before the honors list was published, Sir Berkeley achieved terrific notoriety and put his name in screaming headlines by lecturing on Medicine and War before the London Authors' club. On his word of honor, Sir

Berkeley declared that, despite German denials, bombs containing the bacilli of bubonic plague were unquestionably dropped upon troops of the British Fifth Army in 1916. Asked what was done about the bacilli, Sir Berkeley said reminiscently, "We encouraged cats and owls." (Cats and owls catch rats, which carry fleas, which carry bubonic bacilli.)

Among ten baronetcies bestowed last week the only one of note went to famed Motors Tycoon William R. Morris, "England's Ford," maker of the staunch little Morris-Cowley and Morris-Oxford.

Perhaps the most significant of 22 routine knighthoods was the bestowal upon the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir of the rank of Knight Commander in the Order of the Star of India. Seldom has the broad-mindedness of British royalty in matters of state been better exemplified. All England knows that in one of the most unsavory trials of modern times (TIME, Dec. 15, 1924) this potentate, then heir apparent, was proven to have been surprised in Paris and in guilty company with the wife of an Englishman who proceeded to extort blackmail. The identity of the Prince was concealed as long as possible under the designation "Mr. A," and it was not until last year that Queen Mary restored the Maharaja to general English esteem by welcoming him publicly to the Royal Box at Ascot. Cinema cameras caught the whole party smiling and chatting amiably, with no trace of squeamishness or shame on anyone's face.