A Great Correspondent.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 283, 28 November 1896, Page 3 (Supplement)

A Great Correspondent.

'It was after a fashion a liberal education to listen to the fluency in some half-dozen languages of poor IvlacGahan, the "Ohio boy " who graduated from the plough to be perhaps the inoafc brilliant war correspomiurib oF modern times.' So writes Mr Archibald Forbes", in hi* ' Memories of War and Peace,' and h> another part of the came book ho givos a brief but enthusiastic Bket h of tho same ' Ohio boy,' by extraction an Irishman, by birth an American, ib is a proud, and story. 0; » I tho men who havo gained reputation as war correspondents, I regard MacG%han as the most brilliant. He was tho hero of thab wonderful lonely ride through tho Great Daserb of Central Asia to overtake KaufFmann's Russian army on ii« march to Khiva. Ha it was who stirred Europe to its inmost heart by the terrible, and not lass truchful than terrible, pictureu oF what have passed into history as the ' Bulgarian atrocities.'

It, in, indoor), no exaggeration to aver that, for better or worse. JNlacGahan was the virtual author of the Russo-Turkish War. His pora pictures of the atrocities so excited ihe fury of tho Slav population of Russia, that their passionate demand for retribution on the 'unspeakable Turk' virtually compelled tho Emperor Alexander 11. to undertake the war.

MacGnhtn's work throughoub the long campaign was singularly effective, and his physical exertions were extraordinary; vet lie was sufiering all through from a lameness that would have disabled eleven man out of twelve. He had broken a bone in his ankle just bofore tho declaration of war, and when I tirsc met hica the joint was encased in piaster of Paris. Ho insisted on accompanying Gourko's rniri across tho Balkans ; and in the Hankioj Pass his horse slid over a precipico and fell oa its rider, so that tho halft<et bone was broken again ; but tho indomitable MncGfthan refused to be invalided by I his miehap. He quietly had himself hoisted on to a tumbril, and so wont through the wholo adventurous expedition, being involved, 'hus helpless, in several actions, and o-.ca ;iil buc falling ;ato the hands of tho Turk?.

Ha kept the irunt throughout, long after I had gone home dwablrd by fever; ho brilliantly chronicled the full ot" Plevna and the surrender ot Osman Pasha ; he crossed tho Balkans with Skobaleil in tho d'jad of that terrible winter ; ;ind, finally, at the fiffimalura a«o of thirty-two, he (Hod, characteristically, a martyr tv duty and to friendship.

When the Riwiun armies Isy nrnund Coi'sfantinop!'-: w-.itinir for tho ?ei,r!etnetii. ot i!io treaty of Berlin, typhoid fuver nnd Camp pestilences wero playing their thousands :it!cl ihe.r tens of thoupunrie. Lieut. Greene, .">n American officer officially attached to rho Russian finny, io!i ?ick, nut.' M;tcGahan devutcd himself to the duty of nursing In-* countryman.

His devotion ccst him hif life. As Greetio was recovering, MacGtihan sickened of malignant tvjhn?, aiul R few disys inter they laid him in his far-oil foreign grave, around which stood weeping mourners of a, (iozon nationalities.