BLENHEIM REVISITED

Marlborough Express, Volume L, Issue 97, 26 April 1916, Page 3

BLENHEIM REVISITED

©. <\^s EX-MARLBOROUGH MAX'S IMPRESS lOjSS.

Mr Peter Trolovo, of the Jinn of Booth, Maedonald and Co., Christchurch, was in Blenheim last week, and had .a brief chat with an Express representative. In reply to the question. ''What -are- your impressions after . an absence of ten years .from our northern edition of Christehurch?" Mi- Trolove said: — "Well, I am struck in the first place with the conditions of your streets in the oentro of the town— their good smooth surface—and 1. notice, too. in places the wide lootpaths. Yon have several new buildings, and have cleared away some did

ones. '•The outstanding feature that wui stick in my memory is the fact that on Wednesday morning at 7 o'clock I was in Christchurch, and at 8 p.m. I found myself landed in Blenheim, having travelled up in Mr Redwood Cloultiu-'s new 45 h.p. Hudson ear, driven by Mr Hoy Goulter. It used to he a two days' journey to get from my old home," Woodbank. Now a high-powered car does not turn h hair to do the Blenheim-C'hristchurch. journey in ten hours' travelling time. One might say that the car hardly wek; its feet." all the rivers being bridged and the roads in capital travelling condition. . "It is interesting to note the way the rain lias fallen along the route. In my old district, both north and south' of the Clarence Bridge, there has been ;*n autumn growth the like^ of which we oluVtimers have never experienced, but alas, those beneficent rains seem not to have reached much north of the Ure, when the country ao-ain presents an appearance that baffles the memory of the oldest inhabkant. . "Like us in Christchurch, I see you arc appealing to the young men; but your notice on the Government Buildings is 'noticeable' to a visitor. It wants a tin tack or two. I believe your young men have responds ed very well, and they don't require any appeals to get into khaki to take a hand in this greatest • struggle of the ages—possibly the final struggle as far as militarism is concerned. "What a proud man lie will be. he who, in the dim future, when Time has healed the wound, healed the scarred battlefields,, when the feelings of 'strafe' (which, thank God, we Britishers don't feel intensely) have died down, when memory caste a halo over these tense days of .suffering, sorrow, and sacrifice—a proud innn he will be who can say 'I was m it, and I did my bit.'"