EMPIRE'S NOBLE DEAD SNATCHED FROM DEATH

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 237, 3 September 1927, Page 14

EMPIRE'S NOBLE DEAD SNATCHED FROM DEATH

MEMORIAL AT YPRES. TRIBUTE BY BELGIAN KING. LONDON, July 27. Many thousands of people sitting in their own homes on Sunday morning were able to hear the speeches and dedication service at Menin Gate in connection with the unveiling of the Ypres war memorial. If broadcasting had been developed 10 years ago, one could not help thinking what a very different series of sounds they might have sent across for all the world to hear. As it was, the great army of unseen listeners heard the murmur of the crowd gathered about the magnificent monument raised to the 56,000 who died in the salient, but have no known graves. They hoard the roll of the drums, the blare of trumpets, the band playing the Belgian National Anthem. A brief pause and then the hymn, “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” followed by the prayers and speeches, and 60 on to the “Last Post,” the Lament by the Highland pipers, and the “Reveille.”

All this the people in England heard and many were able to visualise the seen© there beside the ancient ramparts. But an incredible number were probably only able to picture the fateful gateway as they knew it in the years gone by. Menin Gate was dazzling whit© in the warm sunshine when the vast multitude gathered about it on Sunday morning. Faces wore proudly, uplifted to th© Lion of Britain that in calm dignity regally surveys the salient rich with the blood of an Empire. SEVEN HUNDRED MOTHERS. Ypres was gay. with flags in the bright sunshine. Long before the ceremony was timed to take place thousands of visitors were at the memorial. Blind soldiers were led up to finger a dead friend’s name; white-haired mothers brought flowers from home gardens to lay beside the thousand wreaths. Comrades came to look at comrades’ names on Death’s mighty roll of honour. Proudest Mayfair and humblest Manchester; the accents of remote Scotland and of Surrey, of Welsh mountains and of the Fcnland, of the outposts of Empire mingled there, where in October, 1914, the spearhead of the German army \vas launched and broken. But of all the great gathering the 700 mothers and wives of Great Britain, mostly aged, brought over by the Ypres League and the St. Barnabas Pilgrims Fund, were those whom everybody there thought of perhaps most. They represented the people of the country so adequately. They brought to where their dead lie the tremendous tribute of the sorrow and tears of all the millions of mothers whom, the war made to mourn. PRIDE IN SACRIFICE. Lord Plumer, in unveiling the memorial, said of each one in whose honour they, were assembled: “He is not missing;, he is here.” He continued; “But this monument does not express only the nation’s gratitude and sympathy ; it express also their pride iiii the fullness of the sacrifice. It is an, acknowledgment that it was only by their sacrifice and the sacrifice of all who laid down their lives that we who fought and survived were able to carry out the task entrusted to us. Indeed, this archway, standing as it does iu splendid grandeur at the gate of the town, is like the main: body of a protecting army, the lines of defence being represented by the numerous cemeteries around it. Together they are a testimony, more eloquent than any words, of how the troops defended successfully for four years the Ypres salient. “Moreover, this ground, which for all time will be known as the Ypresj Salient, is an historical record of thel friendship and comradeship which existed and will always exist between the two armies, British and Belgian, who fought there side by side; and the town of Ypres, which was shattered beyond all recognition during the -war and has now been rebuilt, illustrates fitly the unconquerable spirit of the Belgian nation.” THE SANCTITY OF TREATIES. The King of the Belgians said; “If it bo true to say that blood bravely shed in a noble cause sanctifies the ground on which it was spilt, there is certainly no ground in the world more' sacred than that of the Ypres Salient, for it was to uphold the stnetity of treaties that England came into the' war, “It was to avenge the unjustifiable attack on Belgium that th© British 1 , Empire took up arms to the remotest Earts of its possessions. It was to oist and hold high the drooping flag of justice and civilisation that legions of proud warriors came to Flanders determined to conquer or to die, at first, in thousands, from England, Scotland,| Ireland, Canada, Newfoundland, Aus-i tralia, New Zealand, South Africa and, India.

“It is my sense of gratitude which! brings me here. I come to render profound and sincere homage in the name 1 of my oountry to the memory of 90.000 soldiers of the British Empire who died a hero’s death for the ideal of justice and liberty. We feel for each and all of them the same sentiments of respect and gratitude.”

REMARKABLE MURDER CASE. CHEATING THE GALLOWS. Snatched from the gallows at the eleventh hour on no fewer than four occasions, a Chicago bootlegger is now making a confident bid for freedom. No man has ever had a more amazing experience. On each occasion the executioner’s hand has been stayed a few minutes before the wretched culprit was due to be hurled into eternity. . Twice a respite was gained through the receipt of telegrams from a mysterious source, and presumably sent by th© per Son who pretended to b© the actual murderer. Twice, too, the adroit moves of a lawyer have arrested the hand of justice, and the condemned man taken from the scaffold to an asylum. Now there is every likelihood that the noose will never fall around the bootlegger’s neck, and that, instead, he will leave the asylum, a free man. Russell T. Scott, a one-time popular actor, Broadway speculator and bootlegger, was found guilty of the murder of Joseph Maurer, an assistant in a Chicago drug store.. At one time he had dabbled in land speculations, and made a vast amount of money, which he squandered wildly. At length he fell in with some “toughs” of the underworld of Chicago and Detroit, who introduced him to become a party to certain bootlegging schemes. It was in tha; course of u brawl that Scott was alleged to have shot Maurer, and he was arrested and charged with the murder. Scott’s -wife, from whom he had been living apart, at once went to his aid, and it was largely due to her efforts that he succeeded in escaping the noose on two out of four occasions. When he was first arrested Scott had pleaded guilty, but when he discovered that a fight, was to be waged on his behalf, he altered his plea, and declared that he had only made the first plea in order to save his brother, Robert Scott, who had, in the meantime, mysteriously disappeared, and who, up to the present, has never been run to earth. On the other hand, not a shred of evidence could be produced in support of the story of Russell Scott, while the evidence was of the clearest possible nature against him. So he was condemned to die upon the scaffold. TWO ELEVENTH-HOUR ESCAPES.

The day of execution had dawned, and the officers had actually entered the condemned cell to prepare the doomed man for his ordeal, when, suddenly, the clanging of the prison governor’s bell, furiously and without pause, caused a halt in the preparations. A telegram had been delivered purporting to have come from Robert bcott, the missing brother, and declaring that the sender was guilty of the murder, and was even then on. his way from Detroit to han 1 himself up to the authorities. In face of such a message, it was obviously impossible to [proceed with the execution, and the 'already trussed man was freed, and an order for a week’s reprieve signed then and there.

At the end of the week, however, no “brother” had materialised, and the (authorities, regarding the telegram as a very clever dodge to delay execution for some purpose, probably to stage fin escape, Russell Scott was aggin faced with the noose. Then, again, at the very last minute'; another telegram arrived, this time from one who signed himself “A. J. Ball,” and who declared that he wa6 a telegraph operator. It further stated :—“1 was an eye-witness to Scott’s slaying. Not till now did I realise that you are hanging the ■wrong man. Am willing to give testimony if you will send prosecuting attorney, special agent, or transportation to Chicago or Springfield. Robert Scott shot the drug clerk.” This seemed pretty conclusive on the face of it, and coming as it did from an apparent stranger, who had nothing to gain by such a statement, the execution was" again postponed, and thus, for the second time, Scott secured a week’s respite from a shameful death (at the hands erf the hangman. LIFE SAVED FOR THE THIRD TIME. Investigations into this story proved that it was nothing more than a daring (invention, although who instigated it (and actually carried it out was not discovered. So once more, Russell Scott jwas prepared for the gallows, and the 'last terrible business of pinioning had |been completed when once again he Iwas snatched from the very jaws of death. This time it was a legal twist ‘which had gained him the respite, for (his wife, in a frenzy of despair had approached William S. Stewart, the lawyer who, but a few months before, had secured the triumphal acquittal of William D. Sheppard on the charge of (murdering young M’Clintock, his imillionaire ward, by administering Ipoison germs. ! Stewart had devised the cunning 'scheme of applying for a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that Russell Scott, having been in close proximity to death on two occasions and then reprieved, had become insane, and that, 'therefore, they could not legally hang ian insane man. Application had been (made to Governor Small of the prison kvhere Russell Scott was incarcerated, 'but the governor had refused the plea.. There was but an hour or two to the execution It was the early hours of [the morning when Stewart, accompanied by the wife, knocked at the door of the house of Judge David, a 'circuit judge in the vicinity. He was in bed, but they insisted on seeing him, and Stewart laid the case before (him with such comprehensive logic |that the judge made the necessary (order, and the wife and attorney (motored post-haste to the gaol, arriving with but a minute or two to spare. For the third time the life of Russell Scott had been saved by one of the slickest legal “wangles” ever devised. EXECUTION AGAIN EVADED. Ten days were allowed for preparing the case to prove that Scott was insane, and then a jury was so swept away by the eloquence of Stewart that they declared that Scott was insane, and he was therefore taken away to. an asylum to be detained until such time as he regained hi 3 sanity. That was in August, 1925. In July, 1926, nearly 12 months after this decision, the authorities declared that Scott was. indeed recovered, and brought the prison doctors to prove that it was so. Stewart engaged alienists to prove the opposite, but this time the jury decided against Scott, and, screaming, struggling and kicking, and raving like a veritable lunatic, lie was carried to his cells with the shadow of the noose once more around his neck. The execution day had been fixed, and there would have teen no delay this time but for the fact of Stewart, on the wife’s insistence, appealiiig against the decision. The judges of the Supreme Court, not only reversed the decision regarding bis sanity, but