TOURIST AND TRAVELLER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1520, 12 June 1919, Page 5

TOURIST AND TRAVELLER.

The 1918-19 fishing season, according to the Wellington Acclimatisation Society’s annual report, had been interfered with during, the concluding months of last year by constant rain rendering the largest rivers unfishable on account of the high current and clouded water, and during January and February by boisterous weather conditions. During March and April everything tended to provide .ideal sport. The largf rivers, with the notable exception of the Hutt, failed to produce good fishing. The largest and ■ heaviest fish known to have been landed during the past season was a brown trout taken with a minnow from just below the big bridge over the Hutt River by a lad whose age gave a year for every pound. The fish weighed 14%1b., and the struggle 1 lasted one and ahalf hours.

Rene Puaux, who fought with Foch at the first battle of the Marne and was with him up to the singing of the Armistice, November 11, 1918, in an interesting narrative concerning Marshal Foch’s remarkable service throughout the war, refers to the great respect evinced by the British for Foch in the early days of the great struggle. “On October 30, 1914,” says M. Puaux, "General Foch heard that the British cavalry had been violently attacked by superior forces, and had to yield considerable ground to the south of Ypres. The line had been pierced; the flank under General Dubois was menaced. Foch left Cassel, motored as quickly as possible to Saint-Omer, where he arrived at 1 o’clock in the morning. ‘ls it true that your line has been broken?’ he asked Sir John French. ‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘Have you any reserves?’ ‘None,’ answered the British general. ‘Well,’ said Foch, ‘have mine. Fill the gap at once. If the Germans get through at a single point we are lost, because of the enemy’s huge attacking forces. I have eight battalions of the 32nd Division that General Joffre is sending me. Take them, and on you go!’ Sir John French was deeply moved,” M. Puaux declares. “He rose and clasped both General Foch’s hands firmly. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘that is splendid help you have brought-me.’By 2 o’clock that morning the gap was filled and the position saved.

General Sir Nevil Macready (Commissioner oft the London Police) declares that since the war a new type of burglar has arisen, who shows indifference alike to the taking of life and to his personal safety. The quarrelsome husband who was content to clip his wife under the ear, now uses an iron bar, or anything handy, for flooring her. The London police chief puts this down to the war. There is not the slightest doubt -that four years of slaughter has cheapened the value of human life in the minds of the public. This is inevitable. It has occurred after all great Civil laws against violence are weakened by a public psychology inured to brutality by killing and wounding, and by the mere reading of vast human losses. The ill-balanced mind follows a subconscious idea that if it is right to kill the king’s enemy it cannot be a very great crime to kill a private foe—if it is right for States and army units to commandeer private property it is no less justifiable for an individual to do so, and the comjnandment "Thou shalt not kill,” the ’fundamental law of human society, is endangered and brought into contempt by the gun men.

Advice has been received from Sydney to the effect that Captain P. V/ Storkey, V.C., who is a son of Mr. Storkey, of Napier, has taken up his new appointment in Sydney as associate to Mr. Acting-Justice Owen, well-known Australian Supreme Court judge. The official story of how Capta'in Storkey won the Victoria Cross appeared in the June issue of “Hermes,” last year, and is as follows: "The cables from London which reached Sydney on June 8 brought an item of news to University readers as surprising in its suddenness as was the action of the young officer who rushed to the attack of the German machine gunners with ten men behind him. The odds were ten to one, but it is hardly likely Percy Storkey and his men stopped to think of that phase of the position. Commanding an attacking platoon, he observed, on emerging from a wood, 80 or 100 Germans, with several machine guns, holding up the advance of the troops on his

right. Lieutenant Storkey had only six men, but Lieutenant Lipscomb, with four men, joined him, and Storkey decided to attack the enemy flank and rear. The two officers and the ten men charged with the bayonet, Storkey in the lead, and expelled the enemy. They killed or wounded 30 and captured three officers and 50 men and the machine guns. Storkey’s courage and promptness and the skilful attack removed a dangerous obstacle to the advance, and were a great inspiration to the remainder of the party.”

Referring to game-shooting, the. annual report of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society states that “it is difficult to estimate the prospects for 1919, as conditions vary in parts, but from reports the season has a healthy look. Advice comes from Palmerston North of 160 ducks taken on May Ist. by one party, 103 by a second, and 60 by a third.” The season of 1918 furnished fairly good sport in portions of the society’s district; in other places game was hard to find. On the whole, black swans were not so numerous as of old in the Wairarapa. Grey ducks were harder to reach, but some good bags were made. Pheasants are steadily increasing in the noth-western part of the district. Hares were plentiful, while quail are not now found in open country. The heavy drop in sales of game-shooting licenses anticipated for various reasons, notably the high price of cartridges, the absence of many sportsmen, and the limited scope of sport expected, did not eventuate, as the number of licenses issued was only 10 less than for 1917, being 241 against 251. Under the Animals’ Protection Act Amendment Act, the year 1910 and every third year thereafter is automatically a close season for native and imported game throughout the Dominion, power being given to any acclimatisation society to petition the Department of Internal Affairs for an open season for the whole period set out in the Act, or for any part thereof, and for imported game, native game, or both. The counc.il of the society petitioned for an open season for both imported and native game from May 1 to ’July 31, 1919, and the open season recommended has been gazetted.

The stories of the four years watch at Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands, are just beginning to be told. One of the most interesting of these has just come to light with the docking of the Wilson liner Borodino in the Surrey Commercial Dock. To all intents and purposes the Borodino was lost when she steamed out of the Thames at the end of 1914. Her job in connection with the Navy was one of the many secrets of the silent service. The commission of the Dorodino was without precedent in the British Navy. From a palatial ocean liner the ship was transformed into a spacious warehouse. What the great departmental stores are to the people of the city, so was the ship to the officers and men of the fleet. . It was one of the happiest ideas in connection with the organisation of the navy. It was conceived by Commodore Lambert, the Fourth Sea Lord, who thought that the monotony of life in Scapa Flow could be relieved by enabling the men to enjoy some of the- simple luxuries of everyday life. Little could be obtained in the small hamlets of the Orkney Islands. On being the Junior Army and Navy Stores of Lower Regent Street, London, undertook to fit out the Borodino as a floating store. It was as fully equipped as any shop could be —provisions, meat, fish, groceries, wine, tobacco, tailoring, hoisery, sports and other necessaries. A staff of 18 was employed to work the shop. New season’s goods were opened at regular intervals, and monthly price lists were issued. The goods were sold at lower prices than could be obtained in London. There was no price-fixing and no profiteering. Shopping became part of the routine of naval life. Drifters went around the various battleships delivering the goods. But the shop was open between nine o’clock in the morning and four in the afternoon, and so popular did it become that on one day 2700 officers and men boarded to make purchases.

That Canada has set about the important work of reconstruction on proper lines is apparent by . the announcement that the Government of that country proposes to expend £12,000,000 on Government railways, £4,000,000 on public works, £12,000,000 on shipbuilding, and probably from £20,000,000 to £40,000,000 on demobilisation and post-war objects. There will also be heavy appropriations for land settlements, for road-building, and for municipal projects. Apart from the demobilisation item of from £20,000,000 to £40,000,000, £28,000,000 will be spent on straightout construction, construction which will enable transport of the country’s goods from farm to market.

Referring to the undaunted spirit of the Allies’ leader, Marshal Foch, from the very start- of the war, long before he succeeded Marshal Joffre, M. Rene Puaux, who fought alongside Foch for over four years, says: Foch arrived at Chalons from Nancy on August 29, 1914, Joffre immediately assigned him the command of the Ninth Army. “It was,” observes M. Puaux, "an amalgam of forces of whose fighting capacity, wear and tear, manners and morals, General Foch was entirely ignorant. He was impassioned in his search for information, and those who lived through those tragic hours with Foch give us a picture of him interrogating liaison officers, who had no exact idea of where the different units really were. He worked on undaunted, and reconstructed, in his head the mosaic of which so many pieces were still missing. All the time he was haunted with the dread that his only son was killed. In 1916,” says M. Puaux, “I remember Foch stealing away to the church at Cassel to seek comfort in the great affliction of which he never spoke. I can never forget his look. It seethed to reveal his whole soul. Above and beyond the indomitable energy it expressed there was a tenderness and a sadness and a great melancholy. His eyes seemed to say: ‘Young men, don’t you know what a father can suffer '• when mourning enters his house, never to leave it? They have taken my only son, and one of my daughters is a widow.’ ” Early the following year Foch was heard to exclaim; "There are, like myself, thousands of fond old fathers who have lost all they loved, the sons on whom their hope was set. But we have no right to selfpity. Our country—our beloved patrie—is all that matters. Let us accept the sacrifice. The whole of humanity is at stake. Liberty must first triumph. Afterwards we may weep.”

“Worm-fishing is sheer butchery, said a member of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society. “No more unsportsmanlike method of taking trout could be devised.” It was the habit of some fishermen to put lines with worm bait into the Hutt River, rest comfortably on the bank until the float sank, and then pull the fish in. This practice, said the member, ought to be stopped. • * * * The Australian cruiser Melbourne, which .has a splendid record of war work, having left Albany on November 1, 1914, in charge of the first contingent of the Australian Forces, arrived back at Darwin last month. After her departure from Australia in 1914 the Melbourne visited Malta and Gibraltar, then Madeira, and across to Bermuda and to Trinidad in the West Indies. A native pilot was taken on board to take the cruiser through the uncharted waters of the Carribean Sea, looking for the German ship Karlsruhe after the Berwick had just chased her. The Melbourne returned to Jamaica, and was engaged on the trade routes patrolling until the Kron Prinz Wilhelm ran into Newport Roads and was interned. The Melbourne then went back to Bermuda, and took up patrolling to Havana, in Cuba, along the trade routes for a number of months, and was afterwards patrolling off New York Harbour, and there caught the Dutch steamer Hamborne carrying contraband. She put an armed crew on board, who took the Flamborne to Halifax. In October, 1916, \ the Melbourne was in dry dock in Bermuda refitting. She went from Bermuda to Devonport, in England, where she was fitted with an aerial gun, and from there to Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands, and also to Rosyth. Then she joined the light cruiser squadron doing night patrol duty in the North Sea. A good deal of rough weather was experienced, and on December 21 the Melbourne lost two men over the side. She carried on these duties till the latter end of 1917, and then took up the work of escorting convoys from Shetland Islands to Bergen, in Norway, and was doing that and laying minefields right up to the signing of the armistice. She went with the Grand Fleet to the German fleet surrender.