HOME AGAIN!

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 793, 25 August 1916, Page 6

HOME AGAIN!

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

ONCE MORE UNDER THE FLAG

("Robrrt Loo in Stevtmon alerps once more ondrr th* British fl»r." »«r» "Mj May»rint."|

"He died with the scorn of the Kaiser almost on his lips; the lonely mountain-top on which he wished to lie passed within the German Empire; but the first British concruest of German territory has brought his Kravc into the shelter of the flag he loved so well. "Twenty years and more he has slept on his lonely mountain top, and for nearly all these years this sacred spot of earth, this holy ground to all who love an English book, has been in alien hands. Our R.L.S., loving our flag and these islands as he loved few other things, dying with the hate of Gerjnan tryanny almost on his lips, has lain, through all these years that you have been learning his poems at school, out of the bounds of the British freedom; he has lain within the German Empire, against which, in the very last hours of his life, he was protesting with anger and scorn.

"And now the war has brought him home again, back within the bounds of British freedom, back to the flag beneath which he died, back to the great company of those for whom he lived and wrote. He sleeps still on the mountain top, but the flag that floats below is no more the German Eagle. The man who loved the children of the Flag sleeps once again within its folds. "The first British conquest of German territory in the history of the two nations, the conquest of Samoa by the brave New Zealand men, brought back to us, back to the shelter of the British flag, the grave of this man whose name is loved wherever our tongue is known. "One of the pathetic stories of the world is the story of the lonely grave on the mountain-top at Apia. He loved this place, and when, after long wanderings in search of health, he settled in Samoa, and built a house at Apia, he made a window in his study so that, as he sat at his books, he could see the top of the mountain. High up it is, through the tangled bush, by zig-zag, rocky ways, almost too high and difficult for a man to climb; but—just because of that, perhaps—he wanted to be buried there. And so he was. "On one side of the tomb are the words of one friend to another, the words that Ruth said to Naomi three thousand years ago:— "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will 1 die, and there will I be buried."