NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11690, 27 June 1901, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

We are indebted to Mr. Frank Dillingham, United States Consul, for the following particulars regarding Mr. Adelbert Hay, late American Consul at Pretoria, whose sad end was announced in our cable columns on Thursday last. Mr. Hay was a comparatively young man, not more than 30 years of age. He was educated in America, graduating at Dartmouth College, Xewhaven, Conn. His father (the Hon. John Hay), the present Secretary of State in America., was one of the late President Lincoln's private secretaries, and was also assistant Secretary of State- under President Harrison, besides holding many other high positions of trust. The elder Mr. Hay was also President McKinley's first Ambassador to the Court of St. James, succeeding Mr. Bayard in that position, and becoming Secretary of State on the resignation of Mr. Day. During the, two years of his father's Ambassadorship, Mr. Adelbert Hay accompanied him. and then learned much of value to him in his succeeding career. On the resignation of Mr. Malcolm as United Slates Consul at Pretoria, a man experienced in diplomacy, and capable of undertaking duties entailing considerable delicacy in their handling, was sought to tivke his place. President McKinley was inspired with confidence in Mr. Adelbert Hay, owing to the experience that gentleman had gained, inter alia, wiiilsu with his father in England, and there-

I upon gave him the appointment, made va- ' ennt by Mr. Malcolm's resignation. He ' went to Pretoria in due course, and for over \ 18 months represented America there most ! nblv, especially in view of the delicate situai [ion existing during his Consulship. At the j time of his appointment the Boer reports ! had it rhat lie was a strong .supporter of ! Great Britain, and that he had received his ' education there. If'' was not educated in j England, and he went to Pretoria purely as : a representative of his own country, and to } perform what It- knew would be most delicate duties. His record showed that ho soon scattered the illusions held with regard !to his leanings. He mole many friends i amongst Boers and British by his strict im- | partiality. Mr. Hay resigned the Consul- ! ship quite recently, after a particularly hard < vear. He appears to have returned to his parents' country sent in Connecticut, for ! i St after his labours, and a few nights atj forwards was presumably sitting at bis win- | dow late at night, endeavouring to find reI lief from the great heat existing there at | this time of the year, when he apparently i dropped off to sleep, and in that state leaned I out, over-balanced, and was precipitated to i his death. Mr. Adelbert Hay was a good j man. and temperate in his habits, whilst, I like his accomplished father, he was very ! literary in his tastes.

There is a special pathos attaching to Mr. Hay's early demise, from this colony's point of view, owing to his many acts of kindness towards the members of the New Zealand Contingents who were prisoners at Pretoria in the early stages c.f the war. To these kind acts many of on, returned troopers bear testimony, and h.'.vo expressed to Mr. Dillingham their appreciation of his own action, which gave Mr. Hay the opportunity of performing them.. The circumstances leading up to Mr. Hay's friendly attention to our boys may be here referred to. On the information reaching (Auckland that New Zealand prisoners in Pretoria were being badly treated— shortly before last Easter—the Governor, Lord Ranfurly, sent for Mr. Dillingham, and asked him whether he thought the American Government would intercede with the Boer authorities on behalf of our troopers. Though America was neutral, Mr. Dillingham was fully aware that Great- Britain bad his country's moral support, and after an interview with the Premier, Mr. R. J. Seddon, lie cabled to the Hon. John Hay, Secretary of Stat*, and within 21 hours of tho sending of his first message, his requests were acceded to, and instructions were cabled to Mr. Adelbert Hay to do everything in his power to bring about the desired results. It is now an old story that the deceased Consul carried, out his instructions to the letter, thereby gaining the gratitude of the New Zealand prisoners, and no less entitling himself to the gratitude of ourselves. It will not be out of place to add that Mr. Dillingham received a long despatch from the United States Secretary of State, in which lie stated that it had been a pleasure to do all in his power to relieve our prisoners, as far as was possible under his country's position of neutrality.

Affairs in South Africa, together with our engagements in Chira, have engrossed such a large share of public attention that little interest has been taken in military operations being carried on elsewhere under tin* British flag. But the achievement by the forco under Sir J. Willcocks, sent to thei relief of Kumassie, in the Ashanti country, is one which must rank high in our annals.. The natives, it will be remembered, rose in revolt and besieged Kumassie, where Sir F., Hodgson, the Governor of the Gold Coast, with his wife,, happened to bo at the time. Shut off from all communication, and with only a limited supply of provisions, the position of the besieged became critical. It was to render succour to the beleaguered officials and their escort, and to rescue them from the hordes of fierce savages that threatened at any moment to overwhelm them, that the relief expedition was sent under the control of Sir J. Willcoeks. The Go-' vernor, with Lady Hodgson, and the majority of the force that had been cooped up with him in the fort, made their way by a detour to the coast. But a body of over a hundred, with three British officers, had been left behind, and was in the last extremity from sickness and starvation, when the relieving force broke through the native cordon, and succoured the garrison. The occasion for this rebellion had, from the rebels' point of view, been opportunely chosen, for they had doubtless learned of our being pretty fully occupied in South Africa, and consequently expected that we should not be in a position to send out troops from England. Nor, indeed, in view of affairs in China, would it be likely that any Indian troops could be spared. In addition to this, the season of the year was the very worst for marching through that malariou3 country. But it was these very circumstances which have rendered the performance of the relieving force a record of British military skill and daring. For Sir J., Willcoeks, excepting a few officers, had nob a single white soldier in his ranks, which were made up of the West African Frontier Force, the Central African Regiment, and a small body of Sikhs. These dark-skinned soldiers, recruited, trained, disciplined, and led by English officers, marched for weeks in single hie through an almost impenetrable forest, with a brave but ferocious foe lurking in every bush. The success attending these operations is a good object lesson in showing what can be accomplished in the raising ana disciplining of material such as this by* English soldiers. "We know now," as Mr ' Chamberlain said, speaking at a dinner to the officers on their return to Loudon, " that in any emergency there are other races besides those we have hitherto relied upon, upon whom we shall bo aide to count, and it ever the tune tomes when we shall have to call upon them it is not by thousands, or even perhaps by tens of thousands, thai we shall be able to count upon the native subjects ot His Majesty in case we have to appeal to them in time of need."

It is gratifying to learn, on the authority of so eminent a practitioner as Six J C Browne, F.R.S., that we are on the eve of new discoveries, which will still further revolutionUe the arts of surgery and medicine, by bringing within the reach of curative treatment maladies that have hitherto defied the faculty. A Danish physician, he tells us, has discovered that light is fatal, to the bacc-ilus of the lupus, and that even the rays of an electric lamp directed to the seat of an ulcer for three hours at a time will cause it to disappear. Virchow has pointed out, in his great work on " Cellular Pathology," that in the absence of the stimulus of light; the librine, albumen, and red blood cells"ol the vital fluid become diminished in quailtity, while the serum is augmented in volume, inducing the disease known as leukmoenia. The Italians kavo a prov-srb that into the room which the light does rot enter the physician will; and P is well known that by the continued privation of light orgauic changes are produced in the heart, brain, and muscular tissue of the human body. In cities where cholera has prevailed the- deaths have been invariably found to ba much more numerous on the shady than on the sunny side of the streets. For young children an abundance, though not an excess, of light is absolutely necessary; and M« Fourcault, when investigating the general [causes. of; chronic maladies,, met; with si

striking illustration of the evil) resulting from the. absence of light. He noticed that some mulberry trees shading tli windows of a schoolroom in which a lumber of orphan girls affected with chrciic disease were being educated had been mutilated, and inquiring the reason he Uirned that the shade of the trees visibly iirreased the severity of the scurvy from wkidi the children were suffering, and that th- girls had greatly improved in health sin* the free admission of the hygienic sunligit. Sir .T. C. Browne goes on to describe tie complete success of serumtherapy as applM to diphtheritic eases in their earlier stales; and to refer to the employment of X rays, not merely for exploratory purposes but as a curative agent for the extirpation of what is variously known as rodent ulcer md epithelial cancer. Apparently, he say:, the rays' kill the pathogenic microbe, ant the ulcer heals. Injections of gelatine fa- tneurism are stated to have given excellent results; and there is every prospect of phthisis being mastered by the injection of serum, in combination with improved sanitation and an abundant, supply of pure air. Than remedy for cancer will be discovered ere. big is the sanguine expectation of Dr. Bell, be senior physician of the Glasgow Hospital for "Women, in which many cases of officer and tumour are being treated; and (it- J. (_'. Browne appears to share in this exlectation. Latterly, we have Dr. F. Robert.' m. Pathologist to the Scottish Lunatic Asjlums, assuring us. in the National Rettew, that mental diseases are now recognised to be in "he great, majority of instances jssentially &e result of the action of variowitoxins or poisons upon those nerve cells 01 the brain that subserve the associativa or intellectual functions." Insanity, then, is not a* mental disease, but a morbid process wlich occurs in those tissues which form Hit physical basis of mind. If it is a physic* disorder, it is capable of being dealt with I>- physical agencies; and Dr. Robertson does not thesitate to assert that 75 per cent. of tle inmates. f-f our lunatic asylums are suffering from various forms of a malady which is " in its nature preventable, and in its earlier stages remediable.''

Lord Methuen, of whose movemeits little has been heard for some time past, is reported this morning to have defeated a- force of Boers, killing 26 and taking sevend prisoners. The Dutch Church in .Smith Africa has done little or nothing to bring about peace, but some of its ministers ire now» appealing to the Boers to end tie w»r. For voting for the Treason Bill. Mr. Bctha, the member for Aliwal North in the Chpe Parliament, was brutally sjamboked by the Boers and his farm burned. There are still between 1000 and 2000 raiders in Cipe Colony. Details of the engagement at Itdta showthat the Boers fought with great-determina-tion. When their convoy was captured, seeing the fewness of the British, they returned, and after a'severe struggle succeeded in recapturing it. British reinforcements, however, arrived, ar,-i light was renewed, and resolved itself into a series of hand-to-hand encounters and fierce melees. De la Bey took part in the engagement, and had a narrow eseaje of being shot.