A DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19364, 22 July 1925, Page 2

A DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST

VISITOR WITH U.S. FLEET. A STARTLING PROPHECY. Among the journalists who will be in New Zealand with the United States fleet is Captain Francis McCullagh, on board the battleship Penn sylvania. He was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, and has been a journalist in Ceylon, China, Japan. Russia, Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, Morocco, United States of America, and Bangkok. He has represented the New York Herald in Paris. He went through the Russo-Japanese war and later was for four years in Japan on-a Japanese semi-official journal. He fell into the hands of the Japanese with a Russian rearguard of 3000 men, retreat- | iug from Mukden, and was sent as a prisoner of war to Japan. He was j expelled from Agadir by the Moors, and taken prisoner by the Bulgars outside the Chataldja lines during the Balkan war. He was made a Knight of the Royal Order of St. Sava by King Peter. He was with the Italians in Tripoli, in Lisbon when King Manoel was expelled, and in Russia on the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. He went with the Russian army, south of Warsaw, when von Hindenburg made his first attack on that city. i He'served with the 12th Worcesters, ! was transferred to the Royal Irish i Fusiliers and sent to the Dardanelles I in July, 1915, made divisional intel ' ligenee officer, and afterwards was on the corps intelligence staff. He aci eompamed the General Knox Military ; Mission to Serbia. In July. 191 S, he ' was captured by the Bolsheviks while I retreating with Kolchak’s army, after i the fall of Omsk, and imprisoned by j order of the Extraordinary CommisIsi on. He was later made a prisoner ; with the Reds, but was released, and j returned to England in 1920. He we.nr • again to Russia in 1922, but wa.-» ordered out of the country by the Soviet, in 1923. In a letter received from him, from Honolulu, he states that he will come with the battleship Pennsvi /ana to Wellington. Speaking at a function at Honolulu, during the recent. "• isit of the fleet, he suggested the holding of the League of Nations Council sessions in Honolulu. He believed this to be the logical location for such meetings owing to the fact that it is the most peaceful spot ou earth, far from the battlefields of Europe. He believed tho civilisation of the world to be shifting from the i Atlantic to the Pacific. Just as the | discovery of America by Columbus ! shifted civilisation from the Mediter- ' Tanean io the Atlantic, so the war