ADVENTUROUS CAREER

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 187, 6 May 1931, Page 9

ADVENTUROUS CAREER

Ashmead Bartlett’s Death

Loudon, May 4.

Tlie death is announced of the wellknown war correspondent, Mr. Ellis Ashmead Bartlett, who was taken seriously ill at Lisbon recently with congestion of the lungs. He was 50 years of age.

Though New Zealand has heard little of *the doings of Mr. Ellis Ashmead Bartlett in the past ten years, there was a time when people read with eagerness every word he wrote, and weighed his many opinions. This was in the war years, when Mr. Ashmead Bartlett was prominent among the several war correspondents who watched the Dardanelles campaign from first to last. After the guns departed nnd a silence had settled over Gallipoli, Mr. Ashmead Bartlett made a lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand, bringing with him a collection of Original active service drawings and sketches depicting Anznc activities — probably the most comprehensive collection of its kind available at that time. Long before the Dardanelles campaign was thought of, however, Mr. Ashmead Bartlett was a veteran reporter of war. He began by accompanying the Turkish Army in the war with Greece in IS9B, and was taken prisoner by the Greeks. He served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the South African War, nnd was a special correspondent with the Japanese Army in the Russo-Japanese War. From then on he spent most of his time in the Balkans, in the Near East, in Morocco -in fact everywhere where there was fighting. His final Great War assignment was on behalf of the London Press at Joffre’s headquarters in France. From 1924 to 1.1-6 he was Conservative member for Hammersmith. He wrote a number of books, including “The Tragedy of Central Europe” and “Dispatches from the Dardanelles.” It may be assumed safely that Mr. Ashmead Bartlett’s presence in Lisbon, where he became ill, was because of the revolutionary trouble in that country.