PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 18, 4 November 1905, Page 2

PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT

Mr. I>. J. Bagnall. Mr L. J. Bagnall, Opposition candidate for City Central, is a Canadian by birth, but has resided for over forty years in the Auckland province, and is managing director of Bagnall Bros, and Co., Ltd., and connected with several other large business concerns. He was a member of the last Auckland Provin-

eial Council, and has taken much interest in local politics. He is a member of the City Council, Education Board, and Hospital and Charitable Aid Board. He has just retired from the chairmanship of the Conciliation Board. 4. 4. 4. Mr. Frank Fitt. Mr Frank Fitt, Independent and Progressive Liberal candidate for Parnell, son of the present (and for some years past) Mayor of that borough, is the youngest of the candidates announced for the Parnell seat. He is a young New Zealander, having been born in Parnell. ' lg On the establishment of a C tholic Boys’ High School by the late Archbishop Steins, he entered that establish-

nient as the first enrolled pupil, and thence, after passing through the usual school course, completed his education in

the seminary of the Benedictine Monastery, where he studied for the Church, under the personal supervision of that gifted scholar and brilliant orator, the Rev. Dr. O'Gara, D.D., Professor of Philosophy. Close application to his studies having resulted in a serious breakdown in health, Mr Fitt was compelled by his medical advisers to permanently relinquish his ecclesiastical ambition. Mr Fitt is a keen student of politics, and was urged and deputationised three years ago to allow himself to be nominated as a Liberal for his native electorate. but for personal consideration towards the sitting member he declined the honour of nomination on that occasion. upon the understanding that he would come forward at this election as an Independent Liberal.

Mr. H. J. Greenslade. Mr Henry James Greenslade, J.P., was born at Auckland in 1866, but shortly afterwards, on the proclamation of the Thames as a goldfield, his parents proceeded to that town, where Mr Greenslade resided continuously until early in 1900, when he purchased the wellknown “Glengariff” estate in the Waikato. Since then he has carried on farming upon an extensive scale, and is especially interested in daiiying. He was educated at the Thames, and was for 19 years connected with the “Thames Star.” Commencing as an errand boy in the office, he subsequently served his apprenticeship as a compositor; then he was appointed the “Star’s” special mining reporter, and subsequently its general reporter, and was next promoted to the position of editor, which he occupied with marked success for seven years.

He took a prominent part in public affairs, with the result that he was elected Mayor of Thames after an extremely keen contest by a majority of 40 votes, but the following year was again returned by a majority of 267 votes. The same year he made an unsuccessful bid as a Liberal for Parliamentary hbnours. Mr Greenslade was connected with almost every local body at the Thames, and was also the first president of the Thames branch of the New Zealand Natives’ Association. When leaving the Thames to take up farming pursuits in the Waikato, he was presented by the citizens with an illuminated address in recognition of his distinguished services to the town, and was entertained at one of the largest social functions ever held at the Thames. Mr Greenslade is a member of the Auckland branch of the N.Z. Institute of Journalists.

Miss Noeline Lincoln, aged 12, who recently passed her examinations, is the youngest associate of the London College of Music in the State of New South Wales. She was taught by her mother, Mrs. N. S. Lincoln, Narrabri, and is a grand-daughter of Mr. N. S. Lincoln, West street, Newton, Auckland. 4- +

Mr. Winston Churchill. “I am a Tory, and must always remain a Tory.” These were the emphatic words of Mr. Winston Churchill in July, 1903, when, one golden afternoon, I discussed with him on the Terrace of the House of Commons the possibility of his translation to the Liberal party, writes Harold Begbie in “Answers.” To-day he sits among the Liberals. The sympathetic reader will understand that I feel it rather dangerous, out of my scant knowledge of his personality, to prophesy the future of his career. He is a rare puzzle. I recall the emphasis with which he told me that moral differences —nay, spiritual differences — separated him from the Liberal party. I recall the earnestness with which he declared his intention of sticking to the Tory party, in spite of the invitation of the Tory Democrats to take either “Mr. Chamberlain as he is. or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as he isn’t.” And 1 also recall the story, told me subsequently by a public man, that before Mr. Churchill’s appearance as a political candidate he had consulted with certain people as to whether it would be wiser for him to stand as a Tory or a Liberal! Now, either Mr. Churchill has experienced a “spiritual” conversion since July, 1903, or else he was pulling my leg on the Terrace of the House of Commons. I leave it to the reader to decide the point. My withers, at any rate, are wrung. The story of this “rather lonely politician,” whom we may all forgive much, is one of the most remarkable of our times. It reads like a story of George Meredith. It is packed full with movement and event, change and battle. Grandson of a duke, son of a popular statesman and a fashionable beauty, educated at Harrow, he was a Gentleman Cadet at Sandhurst only so long ago as 1895. He is just over thirty—just out of the twenties. And — “Think what ’e’s been, Think what ’e’s seen!” Before he was 29 he had taken pait in five campaigns. He has seen fighting in Cuba, in the Himalayas, in the Soudan, and in South Africa. He has written brilliant books on some of these experiences; one of them ‘The Stoij o the Malakand Field Force” —is a work which has received the very highest possible praise. All this before the age of Since then he has contested, and wonas a Tory —one of the biggest workingclass constituencies in England, and has made for himself a political name which, for good or for ill, is as familiar in English households as was his father s at the end of his career. Everybody knows "Winston.” And yet, may it not be said that nobody knows Winston Churchill — and Winston Churchill least of all? “Nothing,” says Emerson, “is more rare in any man than an act of his own. He is one of those adventurous spirits who cannot live without excitement, and for whom fame is the supreme object of existence. Not a quiet, contemplative, steady and increasing force, like Lord

Hugh Cecil, for instance; but a fizzing, spluttering and explosive firework, with nothing else to do in life but to sparkle, glitter and shine. He is a brave man, whatever his faults may be. In the first place he suffers severely in his health. He is physically weak, constitutionally feeble. His heart causes grave anxiety. It is only by an effort that he overcomes the weakness of his body, and only by a tremendous exercise of mental force that he makes his vital organs obedient to his will. Again, he has an infirmity of speech which would frighten many another man from the platform. He splutters his •words, like a man with no roof to his mouth. At the beginning of a speech it is not easy to distinguish his sentences, on account of this disability; but the will, driving on with dynamic force, conquers at last, and at the end it is difficult to detect the trouble he finds with certain words. He is a brave man. with a genuine admiration for courage. I asked him what spectacle of courage in all his battle experiences had most moved his spirit. For answer he went back to a summer night in 1897, when England was full of the glory and the triumph of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. On that night Winston Churchill was fighting in the wildest and most terrible of Himalayan hills. The enemy had made a sudden and a ferocious attack upon the Malakand. One of the bravest of our officers, Lieutenant Ford, in leading a little rush, was shot through the shoulder, and fell dangerously wounded.

It was pitch dark, and there was no moon. An army doctor —Surgeon-Lieu-tenant Hugo—hearing of Ford’s condition, instantly made his way to the swooning officer. No moon, no possibility of using lights, a deadly fire. The doctor did not hesitate, and groped about his body for the cause. It was too dark to see the nature of the wound. To strike a match would be to reveal his position to a watchful and a surrounding enemy. Not to do so meant death to the young subaltern. Hugo struck a match. On the instant a volley crashed out, and bullets came whizzing past his ear. The match burnt out. As it fell to the trampled earth Hugo’s fingers gripped a severed artery in the wounded officer’s torn flesh, and held in the pumping blood. For three hours, under a furious fire, without moon of any kind, the doctor kneeled there, gripping that artery between his finger and thumb. Then, when it seemed that the enemy had broken into the camp, he lifted Ford in his arms, still gripping the artery, and bore him away to a place of safety. For many hours afterwards the doctor’s arm was paralysed with cramp from the frightful exertion of compressing the artery. This is the bravest action, Mr. Church ill told me, which he has witnessed on any battlefield. The incident gives a picturesque insight into his own career. He does not suggest to one’s imagination the grim warrior of stubborn campaigns in distant lands. And he is so young that one

is apt to think of him only as a fighting politician, and one fresh from school. One forgets the Malakand Field Force, Cuba, the Tirah. the mighty expedition to Khartoum, and even the mysterious bird which led him forth from imprisonm nt in Pretoria. He is unlike a soldier. He is tall, thin and round-shouldered. His hair has a copper tinge; his face is paste coloured. The <‘yes are bright, and not at all direct. The lips are as petulant as a sulking schoolboy’s—prominent, and down drawn at the corners. His expression is one of general fatigue—a fagged out young man who is sick of things, one for whom it would be good to ride a camel through the desert for six weeks of idleness and loneliness. He is rather untidy, and careless of bis appearance. He is also careless of the animosity he inspires. Certainly Mr. Churchill is a wellhated man. In his own class he is dis liked rather severely; people regard him as a ••humbug,’’ a young man seeking his own advancement at the cost of honour, modesty and loyalty. On the Liberal side there is a certain uneasiness about him. Some people believe in him as a power, many more admire his qualities as a speaker, but most people are uncertain about his trustworthiness. He is, in fact, as he himself has said, a rather lonely politician. It must be said entirely to his credit that, whether he makes a great name for himself or not, the present interest taken in national finance is very largely the work of his agitation.