Untitled

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16415, 8 January 1919, Page 6

Christchurch bears the reputation of not.being easilv moved i > enthusiasm, but tho- warmth of the reception accorded to General Pan and the,other members of the French Mission yesterday could hardly liavo been surpassed. Tho gathering in the Thoatro Royal, both for its sizo and its cordiality, has not been equalled by any meeting held in the daytime in Christchurch within our recollection. It afforded convincing proof, if any wore noeded, of the admiration and affoction with which New Zealanders regard our greatest ally in this war. It is none the less a tribute to General Pau, whose kindly personality carries him straight to tho hearts of an audience.

Two incidents recorded by the Paris correspondent of "The Times," in connexion with the deliverance of Lille from the Gormans, give an insight into tho reality of the mutual regard between the French and British. When the news of the re-occupation was received, tho Lillois in Paris —refugees from the town —marched down to the mourning statue of Lille in the Placo de la Concorde, and removed the crape which had been placed upon it since its occupation by tho Gormans, substituting in its place garlands of victory, which were afterwards almost smothered beneath tho flags of the Allies. Lord Derby placed a wroath of laurel with French and British streamors, "bearing the inscription:— "Homage to tho brave martyred city— ; tho homage of the British Ambassador as a sign of the joy felt by Groat Britain at the deliverance of tho town." Close by was a humble little bunch of violets, with . the inscription: "Uno Lilloise et un Lillois, 17 Octobro. Vivenb les British."

The same correspondent tells us that the French were much touched by tho a la Fontenoy" of the British regiment which, when preparing to make its ontry into tho freed city, noticed a French regiment coming up behind, and made way for it, so that it was a regiment of the French Northern Corps which was the first to make a glad entry into the city.

The French settlement of Akaroa is naturally a subject of great interest to our visitors. Doubtless they aro already familiar with the story of how Governor Hobson, hearing that Captain Lavaud in L'Aube intended to hoist tli£ French Hag at Akaroa, secretly and hurriedly dispatched Captain Stanley in tho Britomart for the purpose of forestalling the French, or, if he found Captain Lavaud already in occupation, of "romonstrating and protesting in the most decided manner against such proceeding." The Britomart roached Akaroa, before either the corvette L'Aube, or the Comte de Paris with the French emigrants, and there was no attempt on the part of the French to dispute the British occupation. It- may be interesting to add that the present writer was told several years ago by one of tho original French colonists that there was in roality no "race" down the coast—that Captain Lavaud knew of the mission of Captain Stanley and made no attempt to get in ahead of him. Two reasons were put forward for his apparent indifference. The first was that there were two parties in France at tho time, one for colonisation and the other opposed to it, and that Captain Lavaud's sympathies were with the latter, who, «ts n happened, was in the majority. The other pxpl,-iiiation offered i* ("'•

tain Lavaud knew that British sovereignty was already secured by Governor Hobson's proclamation of May 21st, 1840, assuming British sovereignty over the Middle and Southern Islands. The late Dr. McNab gave a good deal of consideration to this subject, and was at work upon it at tho time of liis death. Ho made no secret of thd fact that his researches did not bear out the version of previous historians. It is a significant fact that the French Government, so far from recalling Captain Lavaud, as one would expect them to do if ho had failed in his mission, allowed ln'm to remain for four years longer at Akaroa, for -which place he seems to have taken a great liking.

The late Colonel Roosevelt haa been known to everyone, by photographs and cartoons, and innumerable descriptive articles, as a big, boisterous man, with great voice and laugh, and a genera] air of abounding vitality. Pictures of him when addressing an audience, especially in the open air, gave the impression that he "put every ounce" that was in him into his delivery. As a hunter, a horseman, and a pedestrian, he seomed tireless. Ho was a great believer in physical exorcise of any sort, and it was durmg his administra-

fion that all army officers had to prove their physical fitness by walking 50 miles, or riding 100 miles, in three days. There was a good deal of criticism of this unconventional order, but the President silenced much of it by riding a hundred miles in one day of snow and sleet over bad roads.

Yet, as Mr Roosevelt has told us in his autobiography, he was a sickly and delicate child, suffering much from asthma, and frequently having to be taken from home to places where he could breathe more easily. As he grow into boyhood ho devoured books of adventure —the Mayne Roid and Ballantyne books —to which so many men of his ago can look back with delight, and the desire to emulate the feats of his heroes possessed him. Then an unpleasant experience, when he appears to have been unmercifully bullied by two boy acquaintances, made him decide to learn to hold his own. and ho took boxing lessons, becoming in two or three years fairly proficient. It was not generally known, by the way, until a year or two ago, that while President he lost practically the use of one eye, from a blow received while boxing with one of his military aides. He numbered many noted pugilists among his friends, and among the things he valued and always used was a penholder made out of a horseshoe, with the inscription, "Mado for, and presented to, President Theodore Roosevelt, by his friend and admirer, Robert Fitzsimmons."

Roosevelt was not only a hunter or big-game; he was a keen Btudent of wild creatures, and did much good, sound work as an observer in his expeditions in Africa and Brazil. His interest in natural history dated from his vorv early boyhood, for he was barely ten years old when he started, with two cousins, what they called ambitiously the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History." His favourite literature, as wo have said, was that of adventure, but a book was all the more welcome if, as was generally the case, it had plenty of wild animals in it. It was, however, prophetic of his antipathy in later life to "naturefakers," as he called them contemptuously—people who wrote about animals' ' ways out of their ignorance— that he disliked at an early and usually uncritical age, "The Swiss Family Robinson," "because of the wholly impossible collection of animals met by that worthy family as they ambled inland from the wreck."

Mr Roosevelt's death is ascribed to a clot of blood on the lung. He had possibly not wholly recovered from tho severe illness from which he suffered in the early part of last year. He then underwent two serious operations for abscesses in his ears, they.rosult, his doctors said, of a malignant fever which he contracted when exploring in Brazil in 1914. Tho operations cost him the hearing in one ear and impaired that in the other, besides leaving him subject to dizziness owing to the loss of control of equilibrium caused by the operation on the intornal ear. In one respect at least his death was merciful; a man who had enjoyed such mental and physical vigour could not have endured tho slow process of the gradual decay of his powers. Many word-pictures of Mr Roosevelt have been drawn by visitors to his homo at Oystor Bay, on Long Island Sound. One of the most attractive and most rocent was by Frank Dilnot, ex-editor of an English Labour paper, and now New York correspondent of the London "Daily Chronicle." Ho had a long talk with Mr Roosevelt about affairs in Europo and England, and wrote subsequently: "It might be possible to dislike Mr Roosevelt's politics, rt would bo well-nigh impossible to dislike the man himself. He is one of those rare personalities who would have gladdened the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson. His glittering teeth, his beetling bfows, his pugnacious jaw, his voice rising almost to a childish treble, as ho gave point to a joke or a pungent phrase, were but the expressions of ■ a rich, rare spirit. Ho swayed himself to and fro in his rocking-chair and talked not only about the present-day politics and tho war, but about tho time when he was President, and he did it in ft full flood of enjoyment and satisfaction which it is impossible to reproduce in print. There is a certain boyishness about him which is attractive in itself."