"STALKY" IN THE FAR EAST.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14703, 2 June 1920, Page 2

"STALKY" IN THE FAR EAST.

Mr Rudynrd Kipling, at the United f Services College, Westward Ho ! North Devon, liad as chum a certain wild and wily youth called Dunsterville. whose ;.ufi!ines he immortalised in "Stalky and Co." •• . "Staiky" is now the distinguished : < Major-General L. C. Dunsterville, C.B who has written "The Adven- | lures of Dunsterforce." The old ! "Stalky" peeps out in the title of the ; Look and :n several of its passages, j The Dunsterforce was a British military expedition which set out from i Bagdad in January, 191 S. for Tiflis, to j reorganise the broken units of Russian, Georgian, and Armenian, soldiery, and i restore the battle-line against the | Turkish invasion. It never reached ! Tiflis, but it accomplished many minor | ! achievements. 1 | Dunsterville and bis i ! officers found famine at Hamadan. j Thev did their best to feed the starving j Persians, but their distribution lacked i success. Colonel Duncan thought he had solved tTie difficulty by making the j crowd sit down. . "Perfect order reigned, and a tri- J umphant smile enlivened the features j i of the staff officer. 'Now all you have to do is for each of you to go round with a bundle of tickets and issue them to the most hungry looking.' "With this remark he stepped forward with one ticket in his hand to demonstrate the process. In one moment the whole six thousand were on top of him. and he returned sadder but- ] wiser, admitting another failure, after J having been severely trampled on." ; In his chapter on manning the Baku i line "Stalky" gives a flashing impres- . fiion of a grotesque adventure : ■ "A British .general on the Caspian, i the onlv sea unploughed before by Bri- ; tisli keels, on. board a ship named after a SoutTi African Dutch President and i whilom enemy, sailing from a Persian < port, tinder the Serbian flag, to relieve i from the Turks a body of Armenians in. a revolutionary Russian town. Let 1 the reader pick his way through that 1 delirious tangle, and envy us our task j who will!" Having occupied Baku, the Dunster- J force had to evacuate it. Apart from ! the enemies within the gate, five .Russian dictators constantly questioned J Major-General Dunsterville's decisions, J and the Armenian fighting man was J by way of being a. chocolate soldier: — ""As he sat in the trenches, with the -bullets whistling by and the shells ' bursting overhead, he Jcnew that most _ of his mates had skulked back to town ' and were having .tea with the girls , and why shouldn't he go too? A , Baku soldier could hardly be expected. . to prefer the crash of bursting shells to the delight of ladies' tea parties ( and the ease and comfort of life in the town." . . j Major-Gener.il . Dunsterville claims - thar. owing to the abandonment of the Tiflis scheme, "by a. kind of moral 1 camouflage .the original first party of j twelve officers and twenty-one men filled the gap left in North Persia by the j evacuating Russians on 300 miles of j road, and entirely checked all enemy 1 enterprise on this line, though ham- < pc red by the hostility of . the neutral Persians."-' j The hero of "Stalky and Co." had ( fully lived uj> to his early promise as < a leader of men. , ===—============ ■ j "Chance will not do the work."— £ Scott. " s No one can afford to take chance 5 with health. Yet how many during the Winter, when coughs and colds are so j dangerous, experiment with prepara- \ tion after preparation. Take Baxter's j Lung Preserver immediately and be f sure. Mr Baxter did all the experi- -j menting 54 years ago, and now you can v promptly remedy congh. cold, sore c throat, chest and - bronehiaV troubles. This sterling specific is quick in its action, permanent in its relief. . Get large 2s 6d bottle to-day from chemist i or store. , , .