CROSS OF VALOUR.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3025, 6 April 1867, Page 6

CROSS OF VALOUR.

To th« Editor of the Daily Southern Caoss. Sib, — The letter dated Alexandra in your contemporary yesterday, under the signature of "I am One," headed "Victeria Cross," amounts to a contradiction, the writer declaring that Mr. Heaphy (why it the title of Major withheld ? The animus I fear is evident) is entitled to the decoration, but quarrelling only with the Major's * ' medus operaadi. " An officer has surely a right to a decoration nobly won at peril of life, and has a right alto to contend for it during lifetime, without infringing the tirade about "modest merit which all delight to honour," so little practised in this beautiful world. The order has been bestowed on a civilian before now whose claim was not better than Major Heaphy's, and there are recorded cases of candidates striving to obtain through the press a decoration from which they were excluded, but which was allowed to be well merited. "I am One" admits fully that Major Heaphy so deserved the order of the Victoria Cross } but chooses to brand a legitimate perseverance with the euphonious phraseology of " the Brummagem Bagman." Doubtless to that perseverance the distinction is mainly owing so honourably worded to troops of this colony j and should New Zealand be again drifted into war what greater incentive can there be to those troop 3 single-handed in defence of their homesteads to feel that they are not forgotten in England, but can claim, and have, the muchcoveted decoration of the Victoria Cross. To Major Heaphy's perseverance so distressing to "I am One "this boon to the colony is fairly attributable ; and to withhold the due from Major Heaphy gained by meritorious and acknowledged gallant service— , „ lam Not One. Auckland, April 5, 1867.