New Marquis

Commonwealth (British Commonwealth of Nations)

The onetime Alice Cohen and her husband, Rufus Daniel Isaacs, were commanded to dine, last week, with the King-Emperor, born George of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. As the imperially commanded pair rode in a smart closed carriage attended by postilions from Windsor railroad station to Windsor Castle, they were cheered as the returning Viceroy and Vicereine of India. For them times have changed. . . .

Forty years ago aristocratic London had no notion of the existence of this son of Merchant Isaacs and daughter of Merchant Cohen. Last week George V, R. I., conferred upon his returning Viceroy a marquisate.*

That title is only the last on an imposing list: Bencher of the Middle Temple (1904); Member of Parliament from Reading (1904-13); Knight (1910); Lord Chief Justice of England (1913-21); Baron (1914); President of the Anglo-French Loan Commission to the U. S. (1915); Viscount Reading (1916); Special Envoy to the U. S. (1917); Viscount Erleigh and Earl of Reading (1917); High Commissioner and Special Ambassador to the U. S. (1918); Viceroy and Governor General of India (1921-26) (TIME, April 12).

Observers noted that during his "five great years," as he calls them, Lord Reading was virtually a sovereign represented at London by the Secretary of State for India, a post now held by Lord Birkenhead (see p. 11). He was the first Jewish Viceroy, and at the time of his departure for India many doubted that a Jew could uphold Anglo-Saxon prestige among Moslems and Hindus. His success in conciliating Mahatma Gandhi, fomenter of Indian "resistance by non-cooperation," amply disproved the fears of anti-Semites. Last week Indians expressed pleasure at the elevation of Lord Reading to a place among Britain's two score Marquises. He is the first Jew ever to hold that rank. At Delhi, the capital of British India, the Marquis of Reading is succeeded as Viceroy by a Catholic, Lord Irwin (TIME, Nov. 9).

* The titles of the British peerage in descending order of rank: Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, Barons. There are 28 British dukedoms of which only four have been created since Wellington was made a Duke in 1814. The last dukedom created was that of Fife, in 1900, now held by H. H. Alexandra Victoria Alberta Edwina Louise Duff, wife of H. R. H. Prince Arthur of Connaught, uncle of George V.