BOUTLEVARDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 250, 21 October 1924, Page 7

BOUTLEVARDS.

(To the Editor.) Six—Who wants a boulevard ? The hot, strong 1 blood of our Viking ancestors shouts strongly in our being and demands, at times, a high elevation from which we can turn to the west, and over an expanse of dark blue water throw our feelings and our heart away ■ —away — and murmur, "England!" Refreshed, strengthened and sanctified by the spirit of loyalty and love of one'scountry, one descends to one's work and thS mundane matters of everyday life. Right at your door you have this wonderful elixir vitae —Mount Eden. But for «he weary and the aged, it is in old age the real yearning for the laud of one's birth pulls as the pangs of a mother pulleth for a dearly beloved lost son, the climb to the top is beyond: ao, forsooth, they eat their hearts out in yearning, on the flat. In far Hongkong England's sons realised this. Ou tho Peak —the Mount Eden of Hongkong—they built an hotel. They built a tramway to the top. To this day one can take one's overburdened, oflicialladoned soul to the roof of the Peak Hotel and turn to cast and over the blue ocean cast one's troubles on to the bosom of Old England, who has never ltt one of her sons down —for the price of sixpence. I have seen judges of the High Court, admirals, colonels, subalterns and. the humble Jack Tar, Tommy, and stoker on the roof of the Peak Hotel at Hongkong with their faces turned to Old England, tears trick - j Kng down their cheeks. Englishmen undisguisedly giving way to emotion. A sight that made a German state to mc in 1913, "There is the secret of the might of England." Sir, Mount Eden should be the heart of New Zealand. Access to her summit should be possible for the meanest purse, and to the oldest and feeblest inhabitant. It should be a Holy of Holies to which the foreigner could come and see England's best worshipping at the shrine of loyalty, and go away and forever hang his head and curse the day he was not born into our great brotherhood. BouleI yards—punk am, etc., H. P. REYNOLDS.