In reply, Mr. George said:
Mr. Cleland and gentlemen, I am greatly honoured by your invitation to speak on behalf of the guests at this dinner tonight When I look round at the guests, I am once again overwhelmed that, in such a galaxy of oratorical talent, I should have been selected for this task, however pleasant it is, But at least I can with all sincerity and without the slightest diffidence express the pleasure we all feel at being your guests on this happy occasion.
I can never quite make up my mind at these functions what I should choose as the theme of my discourse, whether it should be the "new order in East Asia," or the old order in the Country Club. Fortunately, some of the most conspicuous examples of the latter species are not quite extinct yet: they showed quite an amazing Vitality in connection with recent events. And that gives me the idea that you might like to hear what I think about some of the other guests, for whom I am replying at this moment.
First of all, we have our two most honourable and learned Judges, whom I might term a contrast in styles. I have to be a little careful what I say about them, lest I find myself in an exposed condition in that Court which forms such an entertaining feature of our.grim office buildings. I don't know how I should describe Sir Allan Mossop. If he had been a great physician his would have been a bedside manner worth a mint of money. As it is, I feel that even a sentence of ten years hard labour would come from his lips with such urbanity that it would seem like a gentle dose of twilight sleep.
And then we have our other Judge, the nimble-tongued Mr. Grant Jones. Possibly there are some among you here who have attended our Court in some capacity or other, not in the dock. I trust, and have writhed beneath the sting of that scorpion wit. When I read the brilliant re-pattee, the sparkling judgments of Judge Grant Jones, my mind goes back to another even more celebrated, and now alas much-lamented, judge of the High Court in England. When he was a young Consul, Mr. Grant Jones was known as the flappers' darling: in his later years, he surely deserves to be known as the "Darling of the Oriental Bench."
What more imposing figure could we desire for our new Lord Mayor than Mr. Tony Keswick? Should we not make haste to weave for him a robe of scarlet and ermine, and to cast a chain of gold to hang round his elegant neck? And who can better lead the unwary Councillors along the tortuous paths of municipal administration and finance than that deft wizard, Mr. Godfrey Phillips, a Wolsey and a Machiavelli rolled into ore?
And next I come {o the presidents of the engineering societies, whose entertaining speeches at the many dinners to which they have so kindly invited me make me suspect that it is as easy {or them to oil their tongues as it is to grease the most complicated mechanisms.
And last, but by no means least, on my list is Mr. W. J. Monk. I defy any club in the whole world to produce a chairman who can make an after-dinner speech with such easy grace and humour as the chairman of the one we sit in tonight. But I "eel that Mr. Monk has missed his vocation even as chairman. of this club, or as a merchant of such delectable commodities as "Sunkist" oranges and "Pacific" lemons. He uni to have been a famous comedian, a Dan Leno or a Leslie Benson, the fellow who gets a laugh with every line, and knows how to wait font We are lucky indeed that we have him here instead to relieve the tedium of our exile from the home-lend.
"And that, gentlemen, concludes my list of guests. It is for such as these that I speak tonight, no easy task, I can assure you.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.