The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6. 1879.

Auckland Star, Volume X, Issue 2743, 6 February 1879, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6. 1879.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the jjond that we can do.

General Pratt, whose death is announced in our telegrams, will be remembered by many old campaigners in New Zealand as having commanded in the operations against the rebels in Taranaki in 18G0-61. The General had previously been in command ol the military forces in tho Australian colonies, but after the repulse of the 40th regiment at Pukctakaari determined to come over to New Zealand and personally direct the operations. Before embarking he mustered the troops in Melbourne and delivered a speech, which was remarkable for its Napoleonic brevity. "Soldiers, there has been an engagenieut in New Zealand and some of our comrades have fallen. We are going to avenge them and I am going to lead you." The Melbourne " Punch" burlesqued this mock-heroic utterance in a cartoon representing the General sharpening his "hanger" on a grindstone, and wearing a most blood-thirsty expression on his usually mild and fatherly countenance. . As a strategist General Pratt was neither distiuguished for vigour nor skill. In the irregular guerillo warfare of the bush he was almost invariably outwitted by the enemy. He belonged to the old-smooth bore school of leisurely massive strategy and slow moving columns. Foiled in repeated attempts to surprise the natives in their fastnesses, he fell back upon the tedious process of sapping, and for many months the astonished and disgusted settlers beheld the spectacle of two or three thousand troops, with batteries of artillery and engineers, constructing a double sap of the most elaborate character, capable ot sheltering a wagon and horses through a comparatively open country, for upwards of a mile in the direction of Pukerangiora, while bands of roving savages were destroying houses and crops almost within rifle-shot of the town of New Plymouth. It is said that on one occasion General Pratt wept profusely at the sight of two dead soldiers, and hastily discharged all the chambers of a little revolver after the retreating enemy, who were half a mile away. lie Avas a tenderhearted amiable sort of man, but had evidently mistaken his calling. As a bishop or a private tutor he might have shone. De Moriuis, <Sfc.