LOVE AND WAR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 45, Issue 13987, 25 November 1919, Page 5

LOVE AND WAR.

A SOLDIER'S ROMANCE. (By Telegraph — Press Association.) AUCKLAND, Monday. A recent marriage at the Registrar's office between a returned soldier aged seventeen years and a girl of fifteen resulted in the bridegroom, Edgar Or. Brown, coming before Mr Hunt, S.M., to-day on a charge of having made a false declaration for the purpose of securing a marriage certificate. The story of the evidence clearly in-, dicated that accused believed iv the maxim that 'all is fair in love or war.' At the time of his arrest he was, orderly in the soldiers' annexe to the hospital at Auckland, and when taxed with having made a false a declaration to the Registrar of Marriages he admitted the offence.

His own account of himself was that he was the son of a mining engineer who lived in Sydney, and that in 1914 when he was thirteen years of age, he .enlisted, as a. bugler with the First Australian Expeditionary Force. He saw service in Egypt, Gallipoli, mid France, and was wounded at the Soinme. Hβ was invalided home and discharged in Australia early in May, 1918. The same month he came on to New Zealfi.J, and though only sixteen years tf v.<A>t. he enlisted with the New ZealanH icrus, giving his age as twenty-two y<-ar&. He got as far as Sling Camp, F;\f,'and, where he was sorted out as nieaically unfit and sent back to JNLvv Zealand. Since his return by the fiemuera in May last he had been employed by the Defence Department at Trenthani, and latterly in Auckland. In August last he met a girl, Ui-ulys Eeddaway ,and though he knew she was only fifteen years of age, he married her at the Registrar's office, giving her name as Pauline Henderson, and that her age was 21 years, while he gave his own age as twenty-five years, lie did not endeavour to get the of the girl's parents to the marriage, and after the marriage the girl continued to carry on hqr work at a confectionery shop and to live at home Accused pleaded guilty and was committed to the Supreme Court for seatence .