PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 49, 14 August 1915, Page 4

PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

PRIVATE J. W. FLOOD, 3rd N.Z. A.5.0., writes from "Somewhere in the Dardanelles" :—"Just a line or two to thank you for a couple of hours' pleasant reading which I obtained from some of your issues sent me by a friend. I am writing this in my bulet proof (?) dugout. The day before yesterday a shell burst overhead and the case buried itself a foot or so in the bank within three feet of my roof. An old shirt happened in the way and was perforated. Fortunately for the owner the shirt was empty. There has never been a picture screened' half so funny as the effect of an approaching shell 1 upon any group of soldier boys. They just "dive" for the nearest dugout or shelter. Quite surprising, too, how quickly they can get off the mark. Never did a threequarter use such concentrated effort in his dash .for the line as is used upon these occasions by,rail and sundry. Then each one laughs as. he conies forth, remembering the expression of oountenance he caught upon the face of his comrade prior to the "dive." We always laugh after a shell explodes. Afterwards, mark you. lam camped in a little cutting which is known as "Sanctuary Lane." Everybody within a radius of fifty yards hastens here when the shelling "begins. In sipite of the shirt episode it retains* its popularity. Corporal (now Sergeant) Wimms of our corps has been awarded the D.C.M. I questioned him about the exploit. With all the modesty of the truly brave he replied : 'Tell you the truth, old chap, I don't quite know. I expect it was that business up at .' Just exactly what 'that business' was I cannot point out definitely. There were mules in it, I believe, and men (not New Zealanders) who loft the mules to their fate or to the corporal, who unloaded the dead ones, and pushed through with the remainder. Needless to say, he's a very rice chap. Again thanking you, I will close. — Yours, etc., 5/244 A Private J. W. Flood, 3rd N.Z.A.S.C. P.S.—All in best of spirits." © @ &>

Willie Forrest, frae Caledonia stern and wild, who has looked: the same age for the past twenty years, hears tne wild pibroch, and he can't bear to stay behind. Willie is past the military age, and so he's going to England to ask the Empire to use him as it wills and where it likes. Mr Forrest was well known in Paeiroa during the mud-boom, kept a timber yard and looked after the local morgue in a strictly _ corondal way. His justice as a J.P. in Ohine■niuri was tempered with mercy, and a Scots accent, and he was not one of the wild young bloods who painted the infant metropolis a' bright vermilion, but who have now grown up and taken the K. of K. pledge. It was thought at one time that Willie would lay down the kauri plank and take up politics, but it was pointed out that Willie was an honest man. For a few years he has concentrated his public service on the Point Chevalier Road Board, of which he has been chairman for three years. His whole life has been practical, and! it is typical of him that he intends to be practical still. May he increase the Allies' munitions supply a thousand-fold.

A delightful old gentleman is Mr Donald Sutherland, of Milford Sound, Westland, the discoverer of the famous Sutherland Falls, who is now in Auckland on a visit, after an absence of nearly 40 years. Naturally he has found the old town somewhat changed since the day he last eteamedi out of the Waitemata in the

s.s. Wellington. To. realise how the advance of. .Auckland" must; have impressed Mr Sutherland when he arrived last week on the Main Trunk express, one must know something of what he has been doing in the interval. After fighting in the Waikato and Urewera districts in both Maori wars, he took to his old calling as a seaman on the fast and furious coastal, steamers, which were making the colonists of the sixties believe that things were rushing ahead too quickly for them. Then the young rover fared southward on sealing and whaling adventuires bent. In the rough and windy latitudes below the Bluff he chased the furry seal and the immense cetacean with varying fortune, and by degrees he came to make Miiford Sound his headqaurters. There, with other wanderers from life's thronged highways he went goldhunting in the intervals of fur and blubber hunting.

Between the two industries he did not go penniless, and bye and bye he go penniless, and bye and bye he gave up the sea and settled! at North Head, Milford Sound. With his dog and a boat he explored and prospected, sometimes " launching out into big schemes, at other times just pottering about in happy investigation. When the beauties of the Sounds and) of the country between them and Lake Te Anau had been sufficiently advertised, tourists began to drift across the rough tracks and

to dare the wild, rushing Maradoa andl Upokororo rivers. And their natural haven at their journey's end was the comfortable house of Donald Sutherland and his wife. No better guide in those mountain fastnesses could have been secured. He showed them everything, and even today is still doing so with as keen a zest as ever. And among the wonders that he unfolds are the footprints, in mud and sand, on the beaches, of the taniwha. There is no doubting the sincerity of this pioneer when he tells how he has seen the strange beast, which figures so much in Maori mythology, and concerning whose existence the Maoris are absolutely positive. Just as the moa was at one time regarded as a myth, and afterwards found to have been a real bird of prodigious size, so, Mr Sutherland says, it will be found! that the taniwha is a creature of the saurian type, like a crocodile, but without visible toes and making a round footprint. That no bones of the creature have been found is not a proof that it dSd not exist, for, being a sea and river beast, like the dugong of Queensland, its skeleton would probably 'be reposing in the river mud or maybe in some lonely bush gully. In the wilds of Westlan dl there are hundreds' of square miles on which no white man's foot has ever trod. Dark ravines and lonely mountain slopes, maybe surround warm grassy gullies girt with native bush, in which many supposedly extinct birds and beasts may still exist.

Among the names of officers mentioned' in Sir lan Hamilton's despatches is that of "Lt.-Col. D'Arcy Chaytor, C.8.," and it is interesting, because the ruddy officer has not before been mentioned as with the colonial forces on Gallipoli. He is a brother of Colonel Edwardl Walter Qervaux Chaytor, C.8., T.D., P.S.C., who was lately reported wounded, and who, by the way, had previously been seriously wounded 1 in the South African war. Lt.-Col. D'Arcy Chaytor has never previously been mentioned as "C.8.," so, if it is a correct he has only lately been "made." He was a subaltern in the First N.Z.M.R. in Africa, and a sterling officer and fighiter. A year or two ago he went to England! to look after the business interests of the "Marlborough Chaytors" in the Old Land, and it was thought he had taken service ' 'some wh ere in France."

Another old "First" officer to be mentioned in Sir lans despatches is Major C. R. Neale of the veterinary brance. "Charlie" Neale, the quiet, competent "vet.," was greatly admired by the men in the little old war that fflooksi such a speck in comparison to its big German brother. He has of late years been looking after the health of the horse population of Gisborne. D'Arcy Chaytor and "Charlie" Neale are rather alike in temperament. The explosion of a large shell in the neighbourhood of their bivouac would probably cause them to turn over in their sleep and remark peevishly, "Dash that mosquito!"

Let brotherly love continue! Here you have the bitter political enemies of twenty odd years sitting in juxtaposition and eating out of each other's hands. You might even recommend this fraternity to the Christian Churches, which work to the same end, although sometimes partisan. Consider, for instance, a little incident at Takapuna a week or so ago. Dr. Averill, Bishop of Auckland, journeyed! thither to address the local flock. At the Presbyterian Church the Rev. Macdonald, a popular and broadminded young man, found himself without a large congregation. He perhaps thought that bishops' visits, like those of the angels, were few and far between, and he didi not complain at the sparseness of the attendance. "I shouJd very much like to hear the Bishop myself," he said. "Perhaps you will come too!" So the Presbyterian congregation followed their minister to the Anglican service. It was a nice little exhibition of fraternity and some day—one never knows—the Bishop may take the Anglican congregation of Takapuna to the Presbyterian service.

"Kaueranga" writes: At the Ponsonby Drum and Fife shivoo' the other day a complimentary speaker declared that band was tlxe pioneer of the boy band movement. He's wrong! Not, of course, that he means any harm. That brilliant organiser and! fine old English gentleman the late Horatio Philips (Kaueranga. Boys' School, Thames) formed and trained a drum and fife band in hie school at least 25 years ago. It was a good band too. The late Mr PliiClips was the most adept man at inspiring people with enthusiasm I have met in very extensive travels. He insisted on absolute musical accuracy and militay precision in this bancll and Fridays were fete days for admiring mothers who went to the old school grounds to see the boys blow down their flutes and rattle the kettle drum. Nobody I know was a patch on Mr Phillips for organising fetes, juvenile dramatic shows and spectacles. He used to take part himself, and we kiddies called him King Henry VIII. because he played a King part in a show and "looked like the "Merry Monarch." Very many good bandsmen in New Zealand owe their early training to Mr Phillips. His son "Ken.," now a distinguished musician living in Auckland, was possibly too young to remember the Kaueranga drum and l fife band, although Walter, afterwards first Mayor of Waihi, may have tootled a flute in the organisation.

One of the quaintest bits of guff that has lately been published in New Zealand is the following wire from Sydney:—"Mr E. Doust, the well known lawn tennis player,, who wanted to enlist, but was refused as he had a big toe overlapping, got it cut off and wil offer as soon as the foot has healed." Possibly the gentleman who sent that par. is a deep student of Scripture, which tells one, "If thine eye off end! Thee, pluck it out," and "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off," etc. If Doust really had an overlapping toe out off he has taken one of the best known means of making military service impossible. The tennis player who can bop round and bang the india-rubber in an efficient manner for years without tripping over his overlapping toe simply throws away all chance of accurate balance and nimblenees by having his understanding undermined. The chances are that a hero worshipping reporter has misunderstood the explanation that Doust is going to have an ingrowing toe nail dragged out with a pair of forceps, and has sacrificed a toe, so to speak, in the interests of sensation. By logical deduction:, if a man has a rigid right leg which debars him from serving, be should get it chopped off and enlist.

Glad to see that Major J. Gethin Hughes, D.5.0., N.Z.C.S., who left New Zealand as Assistant Military Secretary to Major-General Sir Alex. Godley, K.C.M.G., C.8., P.S.C., has been promoted! Lieutenant-Colonel and given a battalion. "Jackie" has won every step in his military career by being competent. Long before the South African war he was a volunteer officer and Adjutant of of a mounted regiment in Hawkes Bay, but he fell over himself in a violent rush to doff his, "pretties" and enlist as a mere private for African service. He won his commission in the field and the D.5.0.. Better still, he won the esteem of every non-political soldier for being a very

gallant gentleman, a keen, efficient soldier and a man who would share his last shilling or his last biscuit with any soldier, officer or man. A peculiar combination is "Jackie." Trained as a law clerk he has always been careless in the disposal of what wealth he has momentarily., possessed audi yet with an aptitude for organisation and a, display of tact. It is good to know that of the two rival political military parties in New Zealand "Jackie" was fortunate enough to come under the influence of the most powerful—the fighting party. "Jackie" always professed to be nervous before going in action, but nobody else noticed it and South African comrades are under the firm conviction that if V.C.'s had been going around in the early stages of the worry one should have gone to "Jackie."

&> @> © Walter Emanuel, Britain's brightest humorist, is gone, at the early age of 49. He has often joked about death—and the joke is on him. He'd make an epigram on the circumstance if he could revive for five minutes. Walter Emanuel was widely, celebrated as the writer for many years of the "Charivari" (,first page of London "Punch"), but his very best work was story work. There is nothing, better in British humour and satire than "Only My Fun." In reality Emanuel was an intensely serious man. At school he was known as "the oyster," because he was so silent. He never played games, and seldom smiled. He had the cadaverous appearance common to most poets and all geniuses. He cordially detested the breed of person known to us as "wowsers," and in "Mr William Sturt" he climbs all over the poisonous breed. He ju6t as cordially hated Germans, long before we were at war with them. Read "A Dinner to Thieves." Comrades at "Punch" dinners were rarely ever able to get Walter to say anything. He n«ver joked, except with a pen in his hand, and the brighter the writing the gloomier the face.

Mr P. J. Payne, A.P.A. (N.Z. and F.N.Z.A.A.), is a popular young Aucklander who has been quietly looking into figures in an expert manner for ten years as the chief clerk to Mr Geo. W. Hutchison, public accountant. He has established' his claim as a highly capable accountant and therefore partners with Mr Wm. B. Kirkwood, A.P.A. (N.Z.) The two gentlemen will carry on under the style or firm of Kirkwood and Payne, public accountants, and their place of business is at 48, Brunswick Buildings, Queen Street. Anyone who knows of Mr Payne's reputation for accuracy and precision will be glad to know he has partnered with a gentleman whose reputation is equally high.

John Berkett Fieldler, of Napier, is no chick now, for he was married at St. Matthew's Church, Auckland, on Wednesday, June 6th, 1864, and is having a look at "Last, loneliest" again. The officiating parson was tne Rev. David Jones, whom some of the old hands may remember. Mr Fielder arrived in Auckland in May, 1861, with the 70th East Surrey Regiment, from India. A detachment was sent to Dunedin in November, 1861, he being attached to the commissariat department. In June, 1863, they lett the South to join the regiment in New Plymouth; shortly afterwards they left for Auckland and took part in the Waikato war, under General Cameron. Prior to joining the regiment he was district clerk at Papakura, under Colonels Lyon, Nixon and Carey. The regiment returned to New Plymouth in August, 1865, arrived at Napier, our friend then holding the rank of paymaster sergeant. At the end of that year he purchased' his discharge. On taking his discharge, he was appointed assistant clerk" at the resident magistrate's court, subsequently being appointed deputy-registrar of the Supreme Court and clerk to the bench. Later he entered the Deeds Office, rising to the position of de-puty-registrar of deeds, subsequently being appointed deputy-commissioner of stamp duties at Hawke's Bay. In 1879 he retired from the civil service and became secretary to the Napier Gas Co. In 1867 Mr Fielder had taken over the secretaryship of the Napier Terminating Building Society. In 1874 he started the Hawke's Bay Building Society, of which he is still secretary. Other activities included the fight at Omaraenui, under General Whitmore, treasurer of

the Napier Bowling Club, and for 47 years he has held high office in the Church of England. Members of the old school, Mr and Mrs Fielder were ever read;y to extend a cordial welcome to those with whom they came in contact, and naturally they have endeared themselves to thousands. © © ©

Mr James Burnett retired from the position of chief engineer, Maintenance Branch, New Zealand Railways. Prior to his departure from office, he was feted and rewarded. The chief gun at the function was the Hon. W. H. Herries, Minister for Railways, and there was a bumper gathering of the staff. The general manager, Mr E. H. Hiley, let fall a few choice, admiring wordssincere and to the point. Mr Herries said that it was largely owing to Mr Burnett's work that the Permanent Way staff was able to make the proud boast that its lines were the best maintained and the quickest repaired in the world. He wished Mr Burnett long life, etc., etc., and then deftly got rid of a gold watch, a pair of binoculars l —and a dressing case for Mrs Burnett.

Mr Herries told his hearers that their guest joined the Public Works Department as an' engineering cadet on July Ist, 1872. Five years later he was appointed to the position of assistant engineer, Working Railways Department, Christchurch, and subsequently he filled the job of resident engineer, Oamaru. In 1891 he was promoted to Christchurch, and except for a short period, during which he acted as resident engineer at Invercargill, he remained at the City of the Plains until 1901, when he became inspecting engineer at the Windy Village. On the retirement of Mr Coom, in April, 1908, he was again promoted to the position of chief engineer Maintenance Branch. Mr Burnett's term of service with the Government of the Dominion covered 43 years, and, if anyone did, he certainty deserved his superannuation. Mr Burnett had seen the New Zealand Railways grow from pioneer lines to a very large and important main: trunk system. He was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute of Civil Engineers for Now Zealand. Mr Burnett is going with his wife to England. They have a wounded son in a British hospital and a daughter studying the kindergarten system in the Old Dart.