NOTES AND COMMENTS,

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11987, 9 June 1902, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS,

A FORGOTTEN HERO. There died lately, Herewald Crawford Wake, the hero of that wonderful Mutiny episode, the defence of Arrah, but the English press almost ignored his death. How true is Kipling's remark that a man may rule provinces and millions of people in India, but when he returns to England he becomes "only old Mr. So-and-so" in a country village, and is thought much less of than the local squire. Herewald Wake came from good old English stock. One of Lis ancestors was one of King James I.'s first baronets, but the family 'take less pride in this than, ifl their undoubted descent from

Herewarrl the Wake, "the last of the English." At the time of the Mutiny young Wakfl, little more than a boy, was collector at Arrah. He saw the signs of the coming outbreak, and, with the assistance of an Irish railway engineer named Boyle, caused the billiard-room which stood in his compound to be fortified. The fortifications were of the rudest kind—just stacks of illlaid bricks round the verandahand were only intended to keep off the assaults of casual marauders. When, through the folly of an English general, 2500 mutinous native troops were allowed to march out of Patna without being disarmed, they made straight for Arrah, where the District Treasury was situated. The white residents of Arrah— 20 in all —together with some 40 Sikh soldiers, took refuge in the billiard-room. They had ammunition in plenty, but little food and less water. Directly the mutineers— who had been reinforced by some 7000 irregular soldiers— that the mad English were making a stand, they came, jesting, to massacre them. Ten thousand to 60—indeed the odds were long enough. But, directly the mutineers entered the courtyard, a, well-aimed volley killed 50 of them. They hurriedly lied from that terrible fire, and though one or two more charges were made they were easily repulsed. .So then the Sepoys mounted guns on the collector's house, not 50 yards away, and kept up an incessant artillery fire. The improvised fort was about to fall on its defenders' heads, when, luckily, the mutineers' cannon balls gave out. I*l vain they fired stones, the collector's inkstands, and the castors from his pianothese curious missiles did not damage the garrison. A graver danger threatened the little force. The Sikhs' water supply was exhausted. Nearly ail of them agreed to drink from the water-skins which had been polluted by the touch of English infidels, but one brave man would not—he would die for the Sahibs, but he would not touch their drinking water. And so he sat down to die of thirst. The mutineers, who knew there was a scarcity of water, lib fires of red pepper to windward to choke the garrison out. Boyle came to the rescue, as an Irishman generally does when his friends are in a tight comer. With some of the Sikhs he dug a well in a cellar 18ft deep. Imagine the work of excavating a well with knives and swords in the height of an Indian summer ! Then the Sepoys tried to mine the fort. Wake and Boyle dug countermines. Finally cattle and horses were driven into the compound and shot in order that the stench of the carcases might drive the little garrison into the open. But the indomitable English only sang comic songs as they lay at their loopholes picking oil' every Sepoy who showed himself. Commander Wake kept a diary of the siege on the whitewashed wall of the billiard-room. He never expected to leave the fort alive, and wished some record to remain of the garrison of Arrah. So for three weeks the siege continued. The food and ammunition were quite exhausted when brave Vincent Eyre, with a few hundred men, made a daring raid and relieved the garrison. If Wake and Boyle had been army officers they would doubtless have received the Victoria Cross, but, being only civilians, their exploits were soon forgotten. Most of the papers which announced the death of Herewald Wake mado no reference to his heroic defence of Arrah. ASSISTED IMMIGRATION'. The other day Mr. Samuel Vaile, at a meeting of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, drew attention to a matter of vital importance to the colony, namely, the necessity for doing something to divert to our shores the immense stream of i population which flows from the Old Country. In the Commonwealth the subject is also being discussed. United Australia, makes the following remarks : — " Australia's short-sighted-ness in the matter of assisted immigration is supplied with an excellent background in the enterprise of the Canadian people. The Government of the Dominion is going to the expense of having parties of emigrants conducted personally from England in alternate weeks, via Halifax and St. John. Considering that Canada can be reached in little over a week, while Australia can only be reached in six or seven by the routes over which emigrants would travel, it is not likely that the latter country will, without encouragement, receive any substantial addition to its population as compared with the former. Canada will, as the United States have done, increase in population and prosperity by leaps and bounds, while Australia will, with its own population increasing very slowly, move ahead at a snail's pace. It must be remembered that the greatest ratios of increase took place in the days of assisted immigration, and that, unless something is done to attract the surplus peoples of Europe to our shores, which, to the working classes of the Northern Hemisphere, seem to be out of the bounds of civilisation, we need not expect to grow at anything like the pace at which other new countries have done. lb has all arisen from the false political economy and the selfishness of the working-class leaders, who preach and themselves believe that the less additions we have to the population, the more work there will be for those who are here, and there is not one politician iii a hundred outside the labour ranks who has the courage to advise them to the contrary. That view is .about as benighted as the middle-age doctrine in regard to sending money out of the country, or as the theory that the introduction of machinery would gradually do away with the necessity for manual labour. In the meantime, Canada assists emigrants to come to its shores by a week's journey, while Australia allows them, of their own accord, to take a six or seven week's trip—or do the other thing. And'yet we are reminded from time to time by self-styled democrats that we must ' advance !' " A FEMALE FEDERALIST. " -All the prominent federalists of Australia are not, it seems, men. There is at least one woman who is entitled to be included in the category— Catherine Helen Spence, of South Australia, for she may be said to be the only one of her sex who displayed a thoroughly active interest in the Federal cause, by writing and speaking concerning it, and by ultimately offering herself as a candidate for the Federal Convention of 1897-8. The South Australian franchise gave Miss Spence, in common with all the women of her State, a right to vote in that election; and, having that right, she "claimed the further one of standing as a candidate. Miss Spence is a pioneer in the political arena of Australia, and if knowledge, character, the power of speech, and the ability to influence her fellow citizens constitute the necessary equipment of a politician, then she is eminently qualified to enter the circle and take her place as a legislator. Miss Spence is more. She is a wide reader, a deep and thorough and courageous thinker, an accomplished public speaker, a humourist, who knows when and how to apply that element in the performance of her public work, and, moreover, a woman of liberal views, kindly sympathetic disposition,- and an ambition to contribute to the serious work of the world about her, which is exceedingly rare in her sex. Miss Spence has made the "Hare" system of voting her speciality and she has even, introduced an im-

Hant and recognised modification of thai %m with a view to its * im l> /. Jh has acquired the title of the »it Sice" system. She has jiittfi *„£ bice system. She has written mucll an -ell on it. and many other subject*-! P°v ; al, sociological, philosophical and econjic. Miss Spence was born in' Sect land, 1825 and arrived in South An. traha ear!y as 1839 . She ** herself the work of a m ** and as writw of fiction for South \ u , tralian Glials ; much of her work ulti mately ling reproduced by London pub Ushers. . little later in her life „ hew „ impress* with the advantages of th principlefcdvocated by Thomas Rareand she forwards cleverly introduced the primles into her stories. ]„ 1865 she was (e to revisit England, and then realised q of the ambitions of her life in meeti. a number of the prominent thinkers the day. She had personal interview*!!!) John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hire. Sirowland Hill, and many othersand she toyed the further advantage of discussing/ith them the several subjects with whic they were associated in her mind. SI: continued her literary, economic, and ciological work on her return to South .ustralia, and took a continuously proment past in public and private charitable novements. Li 1893 she was deputed the State Children's Council athe Chicago International Conference, at while in America on that mission « frequently lectured on the social, pol'.cal. and educational phases of Australianlife. She paid another visit to London when she met another circle of promiuei men, among whom were Mr Balfour, Si John Lubbock, Mr. Leonard Courtney. On this occasion she was asked to ddress a privately-convened meet of nresentative men and womenand the pule men named took part in the same mrting, she being the principal speaker of te evening. Miss Spence has a strong beef in the possibilities of her sex for potical and sociological work and she is i strong advocate for female suffrage. Se has indeed done much to educate thewomen of her State in regard to their zvr responsibilities. A few. months agoshe visited New South Wales and Vicjort, and delivered a series of instructive nd highly interesting speeches on the ILre-Spence system, which she sought to have applied to the Federal Senate, aid even to the House of Representative] lections if possible. In that" she has leer disappointed, for the Senate has already cut the clauses in which the principle wis embodied out of the Elections 13ij. On her recent lecturing tour of New isoith Wales she was widely and generousk entertained by intellectual circles, md she won many disciples and admireisjby her cheery, man-of-the-world manner, aer happy 75-year-old philosophy,, her brglt optimism, and her courage in fighting on many public platforms, against? an obdbus prejudice in regard to any change p the accepted methods of conducting "lections. Miss Spence is quite free ink the silly, undigested socialist views v\ich carry so many women-poli-ticians o{ their feet; tor she has, as we have said dipped widely and deeply into the streai of political science and philosophy, anl realises the complexity of the great problems of the hour which seem "so easy"; to the shallow empiricists who are nowada-s clamouring round the polltical ladder in every British community.