The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1917. SIR JAMES ALLEN, K.C.B.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 13 February 1917, Page 4

The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1917. SIR JAMES ALLEN, K.C.B.

The news that His Majesty the King has conferred the Most Honorable Order of the Bath upon the Honorable James Allen, Minister of Defence, will be received with sincere satisfaction throughout the Dominion. Sir James has been Minister of Defence since the 12th of July, 1912, and as an old officer of volunteers he brought at the very outset much valuable experience to his department. Indeed, he brought the ontlook of a patriotic soldier into his sphere of Ministerial duty, and also Imperialistic ideals with respect to the Dominion's defences and defence forces as factors in the Empire's responsibilities and operations.

He showed this clearly before the present war began, not only as a matter

of sentiment, but in concrete proposals by* which he proved that he had provisionally prepared plans for giving practical effect to his ideas on the subject. During his visit to London, as Minister of Finance in connection with a Government loan and other financial matters, he spoke publicly as to what New Zealand co\ild do

in the matter of helping the Motherland with troops in the event of certain contingencies then regarded by many as mainly academical. Indeed, Mr Allen (as he then was) was^> somewhat unsympathetically criticised for the views he expressed and the provisional promises he made, but subsequent events have proved that he spoke as a man of foresight, and as a patriotic colonial statesman with broad views concerning the oversea dominions' responsibilities in relation to the Empire as a whole. Since the outbreak of the present war Sir James Allen has indeed done strenuous and invaluable

work as the Dominion's Minister of Defence, for he has been at the head and centre of all the responsibility in connection with the recruiting, the equipment, the training and the despatch of seventy 'thousand men to take a conspicuously honorable and effective part in the various fighting areas as soldiers'of the King in battle with the Hun as the arch enemy of freedom and civilisation. In this capacity he has, no doubt, being mortal, made mistakes, but he has also no doiibt been 'sincerely sorry for them, and has more than made up for them by the sagacity and unflagging devotion with which he has carried out the major duties of his high and difficult and most important office during a long-continued and unparalleled worldcrisis, and has (with the assistance of able counsellors and co-workers) so organised and directed the patriotic spirit and lighting resources of the Dominion that it has won its spurs as a young and gallant nation, heroically helped the Motherland in her time of supreme trial, , and proved the mettle of its manhood in decisive combat with the best equipped, and most ferocious fighters that have ever in the whole course of human history pitted Might against Right. It is well that His Majesty the King should with special distinction recognise reward .such good and faithful service, and well that all New Zealand should, on the occasion, cordially congratulate Sir James Allen, K.C.B.—the first New Zealand statesman to become a member of the Most Honorable Ord.er of the Bath.