IS SIR HECTOR MACDONALD ALIVE?

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 281, 1 June 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

IS SIR HECTOR MACDONALD ALIVE?

REMARKABLE STORIES FROM INDIA. The Johannesburg Sunday Times of March 10 contains the following remarkable story: Ever since Wednesday, March 25, 1903. when Gen. Sir H. Macdonald was alleged to have shot himself in the Hotel Regina, Paris, curious rumours have been afloat, all tending to throw doubt on his death. There is at the present hour in Johannesburg a gentleman who has lately arrived from the Far East, and he makes the following statement : — "I knew General Sir Hector Macdonald very well both in Egypt and South Africa. I was in Nan-King, one of the ancient capitals of China, some 200 miles up the Yangtze-Kiang from Shanghai, in December last. I saw a battalion of Chinese soldiers being drilled in European style on a space in the centre of the city, and, feeling curious, I walked up to where three officers were standing. One of them was Sir Hector Macdonald. He was clean-shaven, but otherwise he had altered very. little since the occasion of my last meeting with him in Pretoria. I was almost breathless with astonishment. I was about to speak to him when His eyes met mine. I was then about two yards from him. He turned rapidly round to one of the other officers and said something quickly in Chinese. The officer, almost springing at me, shouted: Leave this ground at once, or we will put you where your friends won't find you in a hurry.' I left Nan-King that day for Shanghai, and I found that the fact that Sir Hector Macdonald was in that country was believed by a great many English people." The Sunday Times gives the above statement for what it is worth. Almost a year ago, a Scotchman who came to this country in one of the coolie ships from Hongkong openly stated in Johannesburg that General Macdonald was alive and well in China. He also stated that the general had joined the Chinese army, and that the last time he had seen him was in Chin-Kiang. Now, ChinKiang is a town on the Yang-tez, half way between Shanghai and NanKiang. On this man's unsupported word the Sunday Times did not feel justified in giving - publicity to the statement, but it certainly is a remarkable coincidence that it should be fully corroborated by a gentleman who only arrived in the city last week, and who had never met, or heard of, our first informant. The facts surrounding the alleged suicide of Sir Hector^ Macdonald have always been suspicious. It is alleged that on Friday, March 20, 1903, he went to reside in the Hotel Rfegina, an obscure hostel in the Rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre and Tuilleries Gardens, Paris. On the following Wednesday, March 25, it is stated by a chambermaid who 'was engaged in the hotel that, while reading his English newspaper, he suddenly jumped up and turned deathly pale. The paper contained a paragraph to the effect that General Macdonald was to be court-martiall-ed in connection with certain' charges made against him while in command of the British troops in Ceylon. He then sent ant for the Paris edition of the New York Herald, and while awaiting its arrival he calmly smoked a cigar. On receiving the paper from the hands of a waiter, he folded it up, put in his pocket, and proceeded to his room upstairs. Two hours afterwards this same chambermaid found him dead on his bed. with a revolver bullet through his forehead. NO INQUEST WAS EVJEbTheEd ON THE BODY. It was stated in all the English newspapers at the time that the body was placed in a common deal coffin and hurriedly taken across to England. Upon arrival in London it was entrained to Edinburgh, where it arrived at half-past six 6*n the bleak, wet morning of March 30. Despite the early hour and the rain, some 400 persons turned up at the railway station. Only the immediate relatives of the deceased soldier were allowed to enter Dean Cemetry, Edinburgh, where the burial took place. It was openly remarked at the time that nobody outside three or four relations of the General ever saw the body, but in course of time the suspicions died down. During Macdonald's campaign in the Orange River Colony there was attached to his staff a Scotsman, who had resided for many years in Tasmania. He caino over to the war with one of the Australian contingents, and meeting Macdonald, whom he had known as a youth in the Old Country, he accepted a commission in one of the Highland regiments, and afterwards joined the General's staff. When Macdonald was alleged to have shot himself in Paris, this man was in the city. He immediately went to the Hotel Regina to Bee the body of his old commander. He was refused admittance to the room, and becoming violent, was forcibly ejected from the hotel. He proceeded to the British Embassy where, after some little trouble, he obtained a permit to view the body. Three hours afterwards, he again visited the hotel in company with two gendarmes. The body was then in charge of one of Lady Macdonald s relations. On being admitted to the bedroom, the deal box which contained the remains was found to be closed up. The officer demanded to see the body, but was again refused permission. He accompanied the corfin until it was interred in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, and on his return to Tasmania he stated that, to his own positive knowledge, the coffin had never been opened from the time it left the Hotel Regina, Pans, until it was buried in the Edinburgh cemetery. , The man believes to this day that Sir Hector Macdonald is alive, and the world— well, the world will hope that he is right. Among the small army of war correspondents assembled at Tokio at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war, the statement that General Macdonald was alive and well m # China was a matter of common gossip.