A DISTINGUISHED CZECHOSLOVAK AIRMAN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17712, 25 August 1919, Page 6

A DISTINGUISHED CZECHOSLOVAK AIRMAN.

General Stefanic, the eminent Czechoslovak professor of astronomy in Paris, who on the outbreak of the war enlisted in the ranks of the French army as a private and fought his way up to the grade of general, winning "the Medaille Militaivc, the French War Cross, tha Cross of the Legion of Honour, the English and Belgian War Crosses, besides other distinctions, has been killed through a_ fall of 1500 ft while air-planing from Venice to Prague. And yet his death, which, of course, must have been instantaneous, was a fitting end to his marvellous career. Nor can it have been to him altogether unwelcome. For by reason of the -wounds which he had received in the early stages of the -war in France and of the consequent grave operations his life was one long physical _ martyrdom. He was rarely free from pain, subsisting only on liquid food; endured, in fact, such tortures that any other man would have taken to his bed and resigned himself to the recumbent existence of a permanent invalid instead of continuing to serve the cause of France, the cause of the Entente, and above all the cause of his native land, whose independence he contributed so much to bring about. His sufferings, indeed, merely seemed to etherealise him and to sweeten still further a very sweet character, of whom it was truly said that he -was a saint as well as a hero.

Stefanic's last public appearance in America was at the banquet given by the France-America Societv at the Waldorf, in New York, on Lafayette Day, last autumn, when he and his fellow guest his close associate and chief, Professor Masaryk. now President of the Czechoslovak Republic, embracing the ancient kingdom of Bohemia. Stefanic was gifted with an extraordinarily keen sight, which, rendered still more acute by his astronomical studies in Paris, caused him to devote his attention to the upper currents of the atmosphere, and when flying became possible he lost no time in qualifying as a pilot, in order to verify his theoretical conclusions. On the outbreak of the war he immediately enlisted as a private in the ranks of the French army. But before a couple of months were ' past he -was recognised as a famous scientist, and obtained without difficulty his transfer to tho air service, distinguishing himself repeatedly in aerial combats, winning one promotion and one honour after another, until brought low by the wounds from which he never entirely recovered. As soon as he was able to leave the hospital he undertook a special mission from the French Government to Serbia at the time when her army was in retreat, and reached King Peter and Crown Prince Alexander by an airplane flight from Italy, across tho Adriatic, and across the Albanian mountains, landing with but a quarter of a gallon of netrol in the tank of his machine. In. 1916 he -was serving on the Italian front, dropping Czech leaflets among the Czech regiments of the Austrian army, and incidentally discovering the large concentration of AustroHungarian troops in the Trentino readv for the offensive of May, 1916. Thanks to this discovery, the thTi Italian Generalissimo, Cadorna, who had been in entire ignorance thereof, was enabled to take, although somewhat tardily, the necessary measures that ultimately checked the offensive.

Then Stefanic was sent by the French Government to America to recruit the hundreds of thousands of Czecho-Slova,ks in the United States and Canada for service in France, and from here he was despatched to Siberia to bring courage, organisation, and assistance to the Czechoslovak war prisoners of Russia in Siberia, who, forming themselves into a proEntente arm)' after the downfall of the Czar, did so much to save Siberia from boinfc entirely subject to Bolshevism, and thereby a prey to Germany. In Siberia ho accomplished -wonders in the way o" smooiliins; out hostility between the various rival factions of his felW-eountry-men and of brining about an undwstandint' between them and the various antiBolshevik "Russian coimnandaoLS, notably Admiral Kolchak.