His Excellency Retires
p. 84 · Read in the full issue
Sir Robert Stanley, Kbe, Cmg, Retiring
High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, was born in 1899 and educated at Westminster School and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
He was commissioned as an Artillery officer in 1918, during the First World War, and saw service with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine in the concluding phases of Lord
Allenby's campaign.
After service with a mountain battery in India, Lieutenant Stanley resigned his com mission in 1921 and devoted the next three years to journalism. He spent some time in the United States as a reporter for the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle” and in 1923 and 1924 was a member of Reuters' editorial staff.
In 1925 he entered the Colonial Service as a cadet in the Administrative Service of Nigeria. In 1935 he was transferred to Cyprus, where he acted for various periods as Colonial Secretary. After the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Cyprus Volunteer Force on its formation, and was promoted to the rank of Major. He was awarded the QBE in 1942 and CMG in 1943, serving as Colonial Secretary at Barbados and Gibraltar before going back to Rhodesia as Chief Secretary in 1947.
Five years later he became High Com missioner for the Western Pacific (formerly the Governor of Fiji was also HCWC), based at Honiara in the Solomons, and also administer ing the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and the British part in the New Hebrides Condominium.
Sir Robert was knighted in 1954. He has, in the last three years, fulfilled his difficult and rather lonely duties with wisdom and unremitting energy. He is now spending a month in Australia with Lady Stanley and their daughter Phillada, who both shared His Excellency's many voyages throughout the Western Pacific in the uncomfortable small ships of the island services.
When the family reaches England and retire ment I hope Sir Robert will make literary use of his experiences, while Lady Stanley will assuredly be busy arranging the multitude of sea shells she has collected during three busy but happy years in the Pacific. —BRETT HILDER.