This Week Years Ago

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

This Week Years Ago

ANNIVERSARIES

By.. Max Whatman

SCOTLAND to-morrow will remember the Gretna troop train smash which occurred on May 22, 1915. Out of the 482 men who composed the territorial battalion of the Seventh Royal Scots, mostly composed of Leith ► lads en route from Edinburgh to France, only 58 were able to answer the roll call when they were formed up on the side of the railway line on the Sunday afternoon. t The train crashed into a "local" about a mile from the famous village of Gretna Green. The "local" had been forgotten by a signalman. It was a head-on collision. While parties were attempting rescue work, along came the northbound Scottish express, drawn by two engines at 60 miles an hour, and ploughed right through the wreck. The impact was heard miles away. Fire also broke out to add to the horror of one of the most terrible scenes imaginable. In the words of witnesses, "It was a sight never to be forgotten. The screams of the injured could be heard above the crackling of flames and a peaceful country scene was transformed into a horrible inferno." More than 200 were killed and as many injured. On the following day Leith, from which so many of the dead had eome, declared a day of mourning. Victims of the disaster were buried with military honours. A Martyr Dies In the latter part of the fifteenth century there dwelt in Florence a great teacher, Girolamo Savonarola. Disgusted with the licentiousness of life at that time, he became a monk at the age of 22. He went to Florence, where he was appalled by the immoral state of the city and the excesses of its rulers. He started a campaign of teaching and soon attained to such power over the Florentines as to be virtual dictator of the city. Savona&la did not achieve so much without making enemies, and eventually irS came into conflict with the Pope. Excommunication, arrest, weeks of awful torture on the rack, and execution followed. The career of this martyr monk ended on May 23, 1498. Savonarola and two of his followers were led out to die. As they walked across a wooden platform to a huge cross at the base of

which faggots had been heaped, wanton boys thrust sharp sticks between the planks to wound their feet. By a refinement of cruelty Savonarola was the last%f the three to suffer. His disciples' bodies already dangted from the arms of the cross before he was hyrig on the centre beam. Then the pile was fired. For a moment the wind blew the flames to one side, leaving the bodies untouched. "A miracle!" cried some, but then tie fire leapt up amid ferocious yells from the triumphant mob. Birth of a Queen Nobody could have anticipated when little Princess Victoria was born that she was to reign over the British Empire, which, during her stewardship, was to see the greatest prosperity, expansion and glory of its history. Queen Victoria was the grand-daughter of George ILL., her father being Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, George's fourth son. She was an only child. The mother was brought over from Germany in 1819 in order that the child might be born on English soil. The Duke and Duchess were allotted apartments in the gloomy palace of Kensington, and there, on Monday, May 24, 1819, at 4.15 in the morning,, was born to them the daughter who was to be the future Queen Victoria. , The Duke, ( while describing his daughter as "a fine, healthy child," modestly deprecated congratulations which anticipated her succession to the throne, "for while I have three brothers senior to myself (he wrote), and one, the Duke of Clarence, possessing every reasonable prospect of having a family, I should deem it the height of presumption to believe it probable that a future heir to the Crown of England would spring from me." The Duke also remarked that the infant was too healthy to satisfy the members of his own family, who regarded her as an unwelcome intruder. At her birth the child held, in fact, the fifth place in the succession. Between her and the Crown there stood her three uncles—the Prince Regent (later George IV.), the Duke of York (died in 1827), the Duke of Clarence (later William IV.), and her father. Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne on the death of William IV. (18.'J7), when only 18 years old. She di«l in 1901. Bottle-Washer Wednesday will be the 59th birthday of Lord Boav<;rbrook, proprietor of the London "Daily Express," and one of the outstanding figures of the newspaper world to-day. Max Aitken, as his name used to be, was born in Maple, a little village in Ontario, on May 25, 1879. His title, Beaverbrook, is associated with New Brunswick, where the Aitken family afterwards went to live. His education was of the scantiest, but it was said of him as a boy that he would fight any boy, any size, any time, on any provocation. He started work as a clerk, actually a bottle-washer, in a chemist's shop. Later he became a clerk in the office of Richard Bedford Bennett, then a struggling lawyer, later Prime Minister

of Canada, Young Aitken interested! himself in business and brought about several amalgamations which netted him some thousands of dollars. Then, in 1910, came his crowning achievement, the amalgamation of all the Canadian cement mills. He made £1,000,000 on that deal. He went to England, entered Parliament as a Conservative member for Ashton-under-Lyne in 1910, and became private secretary to Mr. Bonar Law, also a Canadian, soon to be leader of the Conservative party. Indeed Lord Beaverbrook is credited with the movement which led to Mr. Bonar Law becoming the party's leader. He was said to be responsible for the overthrow of Mr. H. H. Asquith in December, 1916, which led to Mr. Lloyd George becoming Prime Minister. This has been given as the reason for his elevation to the peerage on .January 2, 1917. In 1918-19 he was Minister of Information. In 1929 he launched an Empire free trade policy. Inspired by Joseph Chamberlain's policy of tariff reform, it yet went further in that it proclaimed absolute free trade in all parts of the British Empire for Empire products. King John Crowned John, the sixth and youngest son of Henry 11., succeeded to the Crown by the appointment of his brother, Richard, though Arthur, then in his twelfth year and the son of Geoffrey, King Henry's fourth son, was living. He was crowned (the first of four times) on May 27, 1199, at Westminster by Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury who, as recompense for hie fidelity, was made Chancellor of England, the first archbishop to be vested with that office.

John was without one redeeming feature. Had not the barons suffered, in common with the nation, for the exercise of his irresponsible power, there might have been no Magna £harta. He was the first King of 'England to coin sterling money and gave the Cinque ports their privileges. He died in 1216. He was nearly 49 years old and had reigned nearly 17 years. John's tenancy of the throne wm not a peaceful one. His greatest clanger was the opposition of the Pope, which he had earned through refusing to accept Stephen Langton, the Pope's nominee for the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Ihe kingdom was laid under an Interdict and John himself was «xcominunicated. The Pope then called on Philip Augustus to invade England and depose John. John became alarmed and not only accepted Langton, but surrendered his kingdom, receiving it back as a fief of the papacy. Meanwhile the nobles and people united against John's tyrannical misrule, and in 1214, when he returned disgracetl to England from Bouvines, he was forced to make concessions. Accordingly on June 15, 1210, he met his nobles at Runnymede and-set his seal to the document destined to become famous as Magna Charta. But John had no intention of keeping his promises; having persuaded his overlord, the Pope, to declare the Charter invalid, he raised an army of mercenaries with a view to asserting his claims by force. The barons appealed to France for help and only the King's death averted a serious conflict. Queen Mother's Birthday Her dignity and stately charm unimpaired by the passing years, Her Majesty Queen Mary will be 71 years old on Thursday next. Although her place has been largely taken by her daughter-in-law, she is still a commanding figure in the life of the Empire and she is accorded the deep respect and affection which she won as the wife and consort of her v.eli-beloved husband, King George V. Like her husband's grandmother. Queen Victoria, Queen Mary was born at Kensington l'alace. She was the only daughter and elder child of the Duke of Teck and his wife Mary, a daughter of the Duke of Cambridge and a grand(Jfiiighter of George 111. Thus Queen Mary was a great-grandchild of George 111, and King George V. was a greatgreat grandchild of the same King. v The Royal baby was baptised Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes, and she was known in the home circle, which included three brothers, as May. In 1891 she became engaged to the Duke of Clarence, the heir, after his father, the Prince of Wales, came to the throne as Edward VII. The Duke of Clarence, however, died on January 14, 1892, and in May, 1893, she became engaged to the Duke of Clarence's brother, the Duke of York, afterwards King George V. They -were married on July 6. 1893, and on June 22. 1911, she was crowned with her husband in Westminster Abbey.