THE WILL AND THE WAY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 February 1925, Page 6

THE WILL AND THE WAY.

Forty years ago there landed in New Zealand a little Danish boy, who had passed his tenth birthday but who could not speak English. Next month that little boy, or, rather, the loyally British citizen that he has become, will take his seat on. the Supreme Court Bench of this country. There is something romantically appealing about the career of Mr. Justice Alpens. a career which affords one more illustration of the opportunities New Zealand offers, and the choice gifts it holds in store for those prepared to work tlieii way up. Like the other little boyonly he came from Scotland—who is now Chief Justice of the Dominion. Mr. Alpers began his working life as a pupil teacher; iand, appropriate]} enough, it is to be in Napier, where first he taught, that he is, to preside over his first Supreme Court -sessions. After taking his Arts degree at Canterbury College, the Danish lad was foi three years assistant to the Ptofessoi of English, and for some months act-ing-professor. Students who sat under him then have since won renown in many fields, and two of them have been knighted for national service in widely different spheres)—Sir William Marris, now Governor of the United Provinces in India, and Sir Ernest Rutherford, the famous scientist. At the college jubilee dinner a year or two ago Mr. Alpers said: that he wished for no higher honour when he died than to have on his tombstone the line: “He taught Marris and Rutherford.” It is characteristic of the man that, although he himself is moving upward, and may be taken now to be on the road to ’a knighthood himself, he is unlikely to wish for another epitaph. Tn. his earlier career there followed a long term on the staff of the Christchurch Boys’ High School, during which time Mr. Alpers was also closely connected with Journalism in that city, and he never forgot those who lined the way by which he had come. Not until 1904. when he was well into the thirties, did he graduate in Law and begin the practise of that profession. A man of outstanding ability with the reputation of making a thorough success of everything lie takes in hand, he has risen in twenty years to the highest reward the Law has to bestow. And this was a, hoy whose mother tongue was foreign, who came to this onnn.trv to begin at an age when, most hoys are more than half-way through the primary school, and who won his education solely by his own efforts. Mr. Justice Alpers stands as a monument to what is possible when only there is the will to succeed. I