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copyright 2008, by Victoria University of Wellington
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I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
J.A.N.—Subject good, but requires different title and should be condensed. H.E.C.—Your epic story accepted. G.I.J.—Funny, but too advanced for us. H.F.—Still too free with the rules of poesy. E.A.F.—Rather dramatic, and creates the wrong atmosphere. T.A.D.—Try something happier. E.S.—Lines too general; the change from “thou art” to “are you” and some other constructions are unusual. D.A.L.—The mixture of rhymed and blank verse detracts from the charm of otherwise good work. “Waikiwi”—There are some N.Z. railway fares (school excusion, friendly society, factory, and so on) which could hardly be beaten anywhere for low price. But comparison with other countries is not satisfactory unless the circumstances are similar. D.J.C.—No appetite for ghosts—too bewildering. K.McL.—A colourful picture of a gold-mining town in N.Z.; will use later. G.S.J.R.—On the subject of trampers’ outfits there is room for difference of opinion—compare Smythe and Dyrenfurth in the “Kangchenjunga Adventure.”
“And let our barques across the pathless flood Hold different courses.“—Scott.
(Rly. Publicity photos.)
Work and play on Wellington Harbour.
The idea behind the Wellington decision to hold a National Carnival Week within the next few months is certainly one which the public generally will acclaim.
From the earliest days of the British race its people have found an unquenchable joy in gathering together for fun and frolic.
Foreign trade and price fluctuations did not seriously interfere with the good old days of sports on the village green, or with archery competitions and other such-like diversions of the Middle Ages.
The people of those days may not have had much money, but they liked to play around—a habit, of course, only found among the higher vertebrates.
It was their inextinguishable desire to make the best of things and to turn into a play, or a play-time, every object which would lend itself to the purposes of amusement that kept them fit and courageous for the hard and bitter “inevitables” of life.
The bubbling up of that joyous spirit in the prevailing circumstances is a sure sign that New Zealand is right.
The plan of the Carnival includes very definite instruction in New Zealand's progress and resources. Education will go hand in hand with the merry-making of a carnival-time.
When New Zealanders understand more fully even than they do now, how prolific is their country, how diverse are her products and how fully she is supplied by Nature with all the essential elements for health, wealth and happiness, that confidence which precedes every effective human action will be usefully strengthened in the combined effort for better times.
That the “National-Confidence” Carnival will do this there is no doubt in the minds of those who have studied its basis or considered the greatly diversified and nationally-conceived programme outlined at its inception.
Amongst the objectives of this Magazine is included that of helping to make New Zealand better-known to New Zealanders. In that respect the Carnival to be held in the coming spring must be cordially welcomed, for it will draw people from all parts of the Dominion to the Capital City where, with due regard to facts bearing on the history, romance and economic development of the country, a colourful pageant of New Zealand's progress will be graphically presented by actor, display-artist, singer and orator.
Given that restoration of confidence which may be anticipated from a national-stocktaking of this nature, business generally should become better—it already shews signs of doing so, especially on the railway barometer—and production and industry gain a much-needed fillip.
Although this article is based on the Wellington waterfront, much of it could apply to the ports of Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, which offer the same spectacles of big liners and cockleboats, huge mechanical equipment and handbarrows and varied life and colour that belong to the coming and going of ships.
Motor-Vessels of 17,000 tons, a floating dock that can lift a ship of 17,000 tons, a floating-crane than can hoist a burden of 80 tons! These and other marvels of man's boundless invention the casual stroller on the waterfront accepts calmly as routine developments in the modern scheme of things, and he gives more time to watching the noisy play of seagulls or to the hopeful angling of small boys for sprats. Yet what a story of human endeavour and triumph is here! The sea pushed far back from the old shore-lines—huge stores and wharves built firmly on wide reclamations—and well-organised trade with the Old World and the New—great ships working to time-tables planned months ahead.
Here is a liner gliding quietly into her berth with less fuss than an old-time horse would have made at a hitching post. In that enormous bulk, handsomely lined, the progress of the human race in invention is embodied. Run the mind to the mines that yielded the metals for the machinery and other equipment; to the forests that gave timber; to the foundries; to the shipyards—and think of all the energy and skill required to make that servant of mankind and endow her with mighty life. Here she comes with folk and merchandise from a score of countries. On the wide high seas she has been a miraculous wagon hitched to a star from the navigation bridge, and all the way she has been in radio speech with the ends of the earth—but to the waiting water-sider she is just a “job,” and to the taxi-man, a fare. Well, that is natural enough, for in the workaday world the breadwinner finds himself compelled to be more interested in pottage than in poetry.
At another wharf a sister ship is loading for the 12,000 mile voyage to England. There, in carcases, crates, cases, boxes and bales, one sees the main swing of New Zealand's production. Gazing on those final expressions of farm life the onlooker's thought takes in numerous milkings of cows, and the traffic from sheds to dairy factories; musterings of sheep, shearing, fattening and the fatal trips of stock to meat-works; the various activities of the Department of Agriculture; meetings of farmers, all manner of resolutions and requests, deputations—a whirl and swirl of things rural and their repercussions—much movement on roads and railways — and here are the products, shipped in good hope of rising prices, if they are not already sold. Thus New Zealand goes out to the world, and the world in turn comes to New Zealand.
Hydraulic cranes, smoothly, almost silently, are lifting tons at a time from a ship's holds—but their steadfast efficiency gets not the slightest heed from a few light-hearted men at the end of the wharf. When the morning call came for the waterfront tasks it was not their luck to be chosen. But they fretted not, nor did they fume. They set about doing the next best thing. They cast out sprats in the hope of catching vagrant snapper or kahawai.
An early morning scene on the Wellington waterfront.
The big ships and the big business that buzzes about them are a tonic for any pessimist—they are restorers of confidence in man's immense power of achievement—and yet the walker on the waterfront is pleased that some of the little things are still here. A blue-jerseyed “salt of the old school” has just stepped ashore from a small schooner, and he has paused by a coal-hulk which clings like a dingy black beetle to the side of a large steamer. The ancient mariner knows that battered hulk. He remembers her as a trim aristocrat, daintily flounced, spreading bright wings to the winds of heaven, proudly working in and out of the ports of the seven seas. Poor, tarred remnants of ships! They are warped or tugged in dejection from one wharf to another, with never a wing to fling to the breeze, but between times they have a resting place out in the bay. One can think of their souls communing there o’ nights when the wind gives some of the old motion at the moorings, and moans through their rigging and whistles on the stumps of masts.
Sometimes the stark array of brave ships, reduced to menial service, has a dignity put upon it. This is when a kindly mist half-veils the worn hulks and broken spars, and suggests a battle fleet, hurt but triumphant, resting in the smoke of its victorious guns.
It is night—and the harbour is a fairy-place of electric lights, white and coloured, all with their own meanings. And yet, in all that glory of illumination, one old-fashioned gleam arrests the gaze. It is a friendly oil-lamp by the rickety gangway of a schooner. This relic of the past—with the creaking of the moorings as the little vessel rises and falls on the slow swell of the tide—brings up a rush of memories. There is another oil-lamp on the foremast, and it is pleasant to think that it has been hauled up to its position by hand and that it is not electric. That swinging lamp arouses a memory of some words of that great sea-lover, John Masefield:—
“Some day, perhaps, when the golden age has returned, and all clipper-ships and liners are rusted nests for the tunnies beyond the reach of lead, the oarsmen of the world's galleys will have a poesy and a drama. They will have an elaborate ritual of beautiful songs. They will sing hymns to the sea when the riding lantern goes up at dusk. They will invest their affections for the elements with the attributes of duty, and they will act little plays about the under-water and the white goddesses that haunt the weeds thereof.”
Those little schooners and small steamers that battle sturdily up and down the coast, recall the valour of merchant-adventurers in past centuries. Romantic men are on those craft. They know every nook on the sea-gnawed coast where their vessels may shelter from blustering gales. Sometimes they are caught and sorely smitten, but how seldom any of the bold little coasters meets with any serious mishap! They nuzzle the sea, and glide over the romping billows while larger sisters are pounded till their ribs creak. Those sailors speak of thrilling times in the mouths of flooded rivers with truant tree-trunks leaping at them; of bounds of shallow bars; of pitching at anchor in a roadstead and trying to land or take cargo with a bouncing boat. Anxious watches in the black, stormy night are their portion—but they win through and give no second thought to the peril.
A typical night scene before the departure of the Wellington-Lyttelton ferry steamer.
Preliminary figures of the operating results of the New Zealand Railways for the four-weekly period ended June 24 were announced recently by Mr. H. H. Sterling, Chairman of the New Zealand Government Railways Board. The figures, he said, showed that as compared with the corresponding four-weekly period of the previous year there was an increase in gross revenue of £9816, and a decrease in expenditure of £2208, making an increase in the net revenue for the four-weekly period of £12,024.
Taking the results for the portion of the the financial year from April 1 to June 24, the particulars were as follow:—The gross revenue decreased by £21,402, the expenditure decreased by £40,780, giving an increase in the net revenue for that portion of the year of £19,378.
Mr. Sterling said he was particularly gratified with the increase of £9816 in the gross revenue for the four-weekly period. In his statement of the results for the previous four-weekly period he had interpreted a small decrease of £900 as indicating a steadying up in the decrease in revenue, and he then felt justified in concluding that there were indications of a more stable position in the revenue returns. The fact that the following four-weekly period showed the figures above-mentioned seemed to afford some confirmation of this view and was a distinctly hopeful sign.
* * *
The “New Zealand Observer” draws attention to the convenience of the train for footballers. It states:—
“Time was when Rugby teams travelling in Taranaki invariably did so by bus, but nowadays, the Railway Department co-operates generously, and the departure of one train running between New Plymouth and Stratford has been advanced a little to suit the convenience of footballers. Furthermore, the players are allowed to leave their clothes in their carriage, which is then shunted off the train, locked, and shunted back on a later train for the return journey after the match.”
Of course for tours of any length every football team of any importance finds the train the only way to travel to “finish their journey refreshed.”
* * *
In the course of a spirited reference to the activities of the New Zealand Railways in the direction of popularising New Zealand travel, Mr. H. H. Sterling, Chairman of the New Zealand Government Railways Board, said that, moving about New Zealand as much as he did, he had been surprised to find how very restricted travel by New Zealanders in their own country really was. This did not apply with any particularity to those whose opportunities for travel might be expected to be limited by financial considerations. While cheap travel and accommodation were necessary to a large body of the public, and while the development of the traffic under consideration would necessarily be limited by this factor, the question really took on a wider aspect. What, for want of a better word, Mr. Sterling termed “travel-mindedness” was necessary. The Department has persistently “run” a slogan, “See New Zealand First” because it realised the necessity for developing in New Zealanders the attitude of “travel-mindedness” towards their own country.
* * *
Extract from a New Zealand railwayman's letter to the Editor of this magazine: “I am sending you the magazines for last year to have them bound. I am very proud of the previous volumes. I have had every edition bound by your staff and they form a great addition to my small library.”
The decision of the Government to embark on important public works, including the construction of the new railway station at Wellington, together with improved facilities, was announced by the Acting-Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates) on 29th June. Tenders are to be called this month for the erection of the new railway station the estimated cost of which has been reduced from £483,000, as originally planned, to £350,000. The Government has also decided to proceed with the completion of the Tawa Flat deviation work during the current financial year, and to proceed with the electrification of the Wellington-Paekakariki section at a capital cost of £277,000.
The Bunny Street Frontage of Wellington's new Railway Station.
The decision to proceed with the works is in accord with the Government's policy in respect to both public and private developmental works throughout New Zealand.
In making the announcement,
“In the decision to make an immediate commencement with these works, advantage has been taken of a further factor, namely, the favourable price level upon which construction costs can now be computed.”
Mr. Coates said that before a final decision was reached with respect to the permanent station for Wellington, action was taken to reduce the cost to the lowest possible figure. “A thorough overhaul of the original plans,” he continued, “has been made, and various modifications decided upon by which the estimated cost has been reduced from £483,000, as originally planned, to £350,000.
“A programme of work over a four-year period is being arranged, and the necessary alterations to the original plans are now in hand. It is intended to let the work by contract, and tenders will be called before the end of August. They will close about five weeks later, and the work will be commenced very soon thereafter. In the meantime the Department will carry out the work of clearing the site for the building.”
“The necessity for a new railway station building at Wellington,” said
“Coupled with the rearrangement of the terminal facilities was a new railway outlet from the city by a deviation which would join up with the existing line near Tawa Flat. A commencement of the scheme was made with the reclamation at Wellington, and the driving of the tunnels on the deviation. The position is that the reclamation has been completed, the new goods shed erected and brought into use, and the tunnels and formation work on the deviation will be completed during the current financial year.”
As to the method of working the new line, Mr. Coates said, it was decided after full investigation to adopt electric working. “The electrification,” he continued, “will embrace the section of line between Wellington and Paekakariki. The capital cost is estimated at £277,000. An up-to-date examination of the relative costs of steam and electric working show, after taking depreciation and interest on capital into account, about £5000 per annum in favour of electric working.
“Other considerations operating in favour of electricity were the superior standard of service, particularly through the tunnels on the deviation, one of which is nearly three miles long, and the virtual elimination of the Pukerua grade so far as operating is concerned. This latter circumstance arises from the fact that an electric engine can haul over that grade a load as great as a steam engine is able to work over the line northward of Paekakariki. A good deal of preparatory work in connection with the electrification has been done.
“The Government has had before it the following alternative plans:—
“1. To provide a temporary station building and the greatest possible measure of the permanent lay-out.
“2. To complete the permanent scheme, including the station building.
“3. To continue working as at present.
“With respect to the last proposal, it has been demonstrated that it is impracticable to work the Tawa Flat deviation from the present station at Thorndon. The physical condition of the present stations at Thorndon and Lambton is, indeed, too well known to need any emphasis. They have long since passed the stage when they can afford any satisfaction to the public, while the conditions from an operating point of view could scarcely be more unsatisfactory. A similar position obtains as regards the locomotive depot facilities, while the whole layout involving the working of two stations, is both inconvenient and uneconomical.
“The No. 1 plan would enable operations to be concentrated in one station, but would involve the continued use of the Lambton Station buildings, and the provision of a temporary station building additional to the accommodation afforded by the Lambton Station. This scheme would have necessitated considerable, and probably costly, repairs to the existing Lambton buildings, and this cost as well as that of the temporary station would involve a substantial loss when the permanent scheme was eventually undertaken.
“Moreover, the temporary scheme could not be as satisfactory from either a public or an operating point of view as the permanent scheme. Thus it is obvious that a scheme of that nature should not be adopted unless it were found to be really impracticable to undertake the permanent scheme.
“Consideration of the No. 32 plan—the permanent scheme—resolved itself mainly into one
“It is estimated,” said Mr. Coates in conclusion, “that the permanent scheme will provide work for between 300 and 400 men over a four-year period, including a large proportion of artisans who would be employed at their normal trades. The undertaking will therefore have much more merit from every point of view than some of the works which have had to be undertaken as a charge against the Unemployment Fund in order to procure work for unemployed men.”
The passenger station will be a five-storey building looking southward over a plaza or open space. This plaza includes the area that is now Bunny Street between Featherston Street and Waterloo Quay. With its front on the plaza, the flanks of the station will be, on one side, Featherston Street and Thorndon Quay; on the other side, Waterloo Quay. Waterloo Quay will be the luggage and parcels side, and on the side of Featherston Street, essentially a passenger thoroughfare, will be developed passenger facilities and amenities.
A glance at the photograph of the front of the five-storey station building, with its pillared centrepiece, will show that this pile will dominate its neighbourhood. Even if it were not the all-important railway station, it would be a most important northward extension of the city's architecture.
Wellington's New Railway Station. The Main Concourse.
The station, like the wharves, will give continuity to the stream of traffic up and down New Zealand, and between New Zealand and oversea. For through traffic it will be a conduit of maximum efficiency. Great quantities of produce and merchandise will run up and down this conduit without the confusion and awkwardness of the two-stations method that has obtained hitherto.
For passengers to whom Wellington is destination or who are to stop here, the railway transportation system has had to be woven into the city transportation system, and detailed plans have been made for the two to interlock.
The position of the station was influenced by the necessity for keeping all passenger platforms and the trackwork serving them, to the south of Davis Street. This brought the building into the position now planned. Fortunately this position fitted in with some other important considerations. There was room here, between Featherston Street and Waterloo Quay, to develop an adequate layout fronting towards Bunny Street and at such a distance from that street as to provide a broad plaza for the circulation of city traffic making contact with the station—trams, buses, motors, and pedestrians. The station building will present a perfectly symmetrical front to plaza, with a central doorway giving entrance to the main booking hall.
The central feature of the station layout is the large concourse which provides an internal circulating area, and which has direct access to Featherston Street…. The arrival platforms will be served by a wide carriage road from Waterloo Quay. Passengers will be able to step direct from train to tram or motor car, and so reach the city with the briefest delay.
Sport is work out of working hours, or unpaid overtime. Roughly speaking, sport is divisible into three classes—organised sport, agonised sport, and naturalised sport. The first two are one, as in football and kindred bawls. Football often is classed as a “blood sport,” but is also a mud and blood sport. All organised sport is agonised sport, as you know if you have ever stood up to body-line bawling, front-line scrumming, shin-line shindying or hockey hock-knocks, soccer-socking, and racquet-racking or hard-courtship in the modern love-game. Such sports are necessary heavals for heaving the rancour and discharging the cargo of repression kept under closed hatches during the week. Generally speaking, investigation will disclose that the adult bash-artist, the smash-and-grab practitioner, and the arson addict have never in their youth stood up to any ball harder than a brandy ball, and thus have never learnt that it is far better to get it off your chest with boot and ball than with gelignite and jemmy. In fact, Freud-ulently speaking, it is not too late to organise football matches between safe-blowing fifteens and smash-and-grab teams, or even bag-snatchers versus sand-baggers, cat-burglars versus “ratters,” and perhaps a seven-a-side game between confidence-men and coiners. For sport is only an organised method of leading superfluous energy into proper channels and deflecting it from improper ones. Consequently the criminal classes would leave their old school with top marks if encouraged to leave foot-prints instead of finger-prints on the fields of their endeavour. Instead of mere time-servers they might develop into “tricky halves,” or devote their energies to scrum “locking” rather than safe unlocking, or cracking a rib in preference to cracking a crib. Therefore organised games are all to the good, and “time” never hangs heavily on the hands of those who utilise it with their feet, or any other part of their fighting equipment. It has been said that Britain's battles are won on the playing fields of Eton, but why go so far as Eton? You can easily be bitten without being Eton.
Having disposed of agonised sports and put the criminal classes out of court, let us turn to naturalised sport, which is so assiduously advertised to attract the tourist. With the hearty disapproval of the Tourist Department, the whole-hearted disavowal of the Publicity Department, the deep disgust of the Railway Department and the deeper distrust of my readers (if any), I propose to postulate preposterously upon the sporting chances offered by our Grand National cross-country hunts. As we all know, by studying the windows of fishmongers, New Zealand teems with fish, flesh and fowl accessible to the hand of the hunter; i.e., the fish in the water, the flesh on the land, and the fowl in the air. The hunter who knows his book of birds and beasts, therefore, will not make the mistake of stalking the wapiti with whoopee, the “rainbow” with a spade, or the wild duck with a syphon or other aerated weapon.
Fishing, angling, dangling, or dumb-wading, was first discovered by Sir Isaak Newton who, after noting how quickly an apple can fall off a tree, invented the law of gravity, and thus got an angle on angling. The law of levity may do for such sports as pitching the pie or throwing the party; but in fishing, the only natural law is the law of gravity. If it were not a grave and serious matter, who would stand all day immersed to his watch pocket in glacier-gravy, like a traffic cop in Venice? Fly-fishing, in fact, demands an iron constitution (rustless), nerves of steel (stainless), a heart of oak (warpless), and a heap of hope (dauntless). Some fishermen actually catch fish, and others only say they do, thus illustrating the difference between veracity and loquacity, a nibble and a quibble, and hooks and lies. Trout fishing is a matter of aquatic acquiescence or waiting and wading, for trout will not swallow hook, line and sinker like you and I, but will only take a fly at such things as pink-eyed spinnakers, minnows, winnows or swizzled swats.
Now let us turn from duckings to ducks. Although the wild duck also is a damp sort of bird, and only comes out to be shot when it is raining, the idea is to “get the duck wet,” even if you get wetter. Ducks always prefer to be shot in braces, not so much to keep up their pants as to keep up their spirits. In this respect they are very human, for most men get “shot” in pairs when there are “bracers” about. Only a snipe will get “shot” from the hip. The duck shooter always waits until the meteorologist gets the megrims or a cyclonic complex, and when he hears that everything wet is predicted from cloud-bursts, water spouts and blizzards, to avalanches and tide-rips, he knows that it is good weather for ducks. In the middle of the night he boards a punt, which leaks in every pore, and hides in the bullrushes like Moses did—but Moses knew enough to keep dry. The duck-hunter likes to be early so that he can pot the early duck when it floats off its eggs for its matutinal water-wave. It rains all night, and the hunter divides his time between trying to get his share of the whisky and scratching frog bites and eel stings. Morning dribbles rather than breaks, and the ducks are heard ducking their ducklings before they rise into the atmospheric damp to be shot. Everything is as tense as an elastic band about to play the Gutta-percha national anthem. The ducks rise, honking like a baby car that has sighted its bottle. Spirits are raised, eyes are raised, guns are raised, and—the punt sinks with a sigh like a punctured sea-cow. The great day is over and the duckists are under. Such is sport!
Stalking the wapiti is no “whoopee.” Well might you ask: “What is wapiti and why?” To be inexact, a wapiti is a sort of a moose on the loose or a deer out of gear—otherwise it would never have a name like that. It is probably called a wapiti because of its woppity walk, and it runs like a stanza of modern verse. But although it looks soft, to boot, it is hard to shoot; which perhaps explains the following old hunting song. Nothing else can.
The fun of shooting wapiti is that you don't. You stalk the wapiti on your breakfast for six or seven hours and the wapiti keeps ahead of the game. Then you become desperate and decide to shoot without seeing the whites of his eyes. Just as you raise your wapiti-waiver he remembers that he has got a date with a roe or a doe or a do-do, or something in the next parish, and wops off. As a “blood sport” brewing the Bovril has it all over wopping the wapiti.
Big Things Ahead!!
But the great out-of-doors is an effective antidote for slumptiousness, because old Joshua Slump hates the open spaces as an oyster hates vinegar. There is no doubt that, like Monday morning and toothache, he exists; so does measles, but we don't paint spots on our chest just to keep us reminded of the fact. Lest Joshua Slump become King of the Dearth and Monarch of all he Dismays let us put a hoodoo on his “how do” with a little community sing.
The more recognition Slump gets the more wreck-ignition he wreaks, so let's dump Slump and look to the big things ahead.
The question of the relationship between railway and road transport is undoubtedly one of the most important issues at the present time. At this year's gathering of the International Railway Congress at Cairo, Egypt, the view was expressed that it was the duty of Governments to pass legislation to provide for the equalising of charges between the two methods of transport, and to put the whole problem of railroad transport upon a more equable footing.
In Britain, following the issue of the Salter Report, provision is being made for the better regulation of the movement of freight by road. Heavy commercial trucks are being subjected to greatly increased taxation, and heavy freight generally is being encouraged to pass by rail instead of by road. Across the Atlantic, an expert committee appointed by the United States Government has made recommendations for the regulation of road transport on much the same lines as those come to in Britain; while throughout the European continent active steps are being taken to remove the undoubted hardships suffered by the railways in respect of preferential treatment given to the road carriers.
That there is a place for road transport in every land is freely admitted. Road transport, however, should be subjected to suitable regulation, not only in fairness to the railways, but also in its own and the public interest. It is for everyone's ultimate good that this move should be made, and on this account legislation such as is being enforced in Britain, and such as is contained in the New Zealand Transport Licensing Act, is especially welcome. In England great strides have been made in railroad co-ordination, and one of the most successful moves has been the acquisition by the railways of established private road transport undertakings and their operation as part of the railway machine. In some cases the railways have purchased the road transport systems lock, stock and barrel; in other instances merely substantial financial control has been acquired. What is aimed at by the railways is door to door service, embracing both rail and road movement, and including all the facilities such as storage, warehousing, railhead distribution, and the like, for which the railways are admirably equipped. There is no desire to wreck road transport; it is simply a matter of seeking a suitable adjustment as between rail and road movement.
An important step forward in railroad co-ordination is found by the British railways in the increasing employment of containers for various types of freight. Both open and covered containers, capable of movement either by rail or road, are utilised in large numbers for the transport of miscellaneous merchandise, while recently the London, Midland and
This year new containers for the transport of fresh meat have been introduced on the Southern Railway. These have interior floors of sheet metal, while suspended from the roof are rows of sliding steel hooks, capable of holding nearly eighty sides of beef or carcases.
In England, the summer holiday season is now at its height, and to cater for the needs of the vacationist the railways have introduced many fine new passenger carriages. Noteworthy additions to the British carriage stocks are thirty-eight new all-steel Pullmans purchased for the London-Brighton services of the Southern line, and 278 new passenger carriages put into traffic on the London and North Eastern system.
New methods of construction have been embodied in the Southern carriages, especial attention being paid to lighting, insulation and ventilation. Each carriage has a length of 68 feet 8 inches, and the total height from top of rail to roof is 12 feet 5 inches, with a total width of 9 feet. Twenty-three of the carriages each accommodate 12 first-class and 16 third-class passengers. The carriages are also equipped with a kitchen and pantry. The other fifteen Pullmans comprise first-class cars with kitchens, and third-class parlour cars. All cooking is performed by electricity. The 278 new carriages on the L. and N.E. line comprise restaurant and buffet cars, and first and third-class main-line day carriages. Five complete new train sets are included, each composed of ten day cars and two buffet cars, capable of seating 600 passengers. Alternatively, each set may be divided and operated as two distinct trains, each accommodating 300 passengers, with buffet car.
The art of the passenger carriage painter has made wonderful strides during
With a view to increasing the durability of carriage paint, and lengthening the period between the successive revarnishing or repainting of vehicles, extensive research has been undertaken by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. It has been established by these experiments that this period may safely be increased to eight or nine years. The main problems to be tackled in the preservation of carriage exteriors are penetration of moisture, and contraction of the paint film during the normal ageing of the finish. After extensive trials the L.M. and S. Railway has devised a system whereby a mixture of calcium soaps, wax and mineral oil, is applied to the stock after the exterior finish has become hardened, this not only serving as an ideal water repellant, but also definitely arresting contraction in the paint or varnish film. The particular mixture consists of 44 parts by weight of mineral cleaning oil, 30 parts of paraffin oil, 16 parts of cerosin wax, and 10 parts of calcium stearate, the whole coloured to taste with oil-soluble dye. A further advantage
While at Derby, experiments have been in progress with the idea of increasing the durability of carriage paint, at the Swindon works of the Great Western line research has produced a novel type of apparatus for purifying the interiors and upholstery of rolling-stock. The apparatus takes the form of a steel cylinder, 85 feet in length and 16 feet 6 inches in diameter, furnished with a track upon which the carriages to be treated are run in without dismantling in any degree. The cylinder is then sealed by means of an air-tight door, and the temperature inside raised to 120 deg. F. by steam-heating pipes, these completely encircling the carriage. A pump withdraws the air from the cylinder, until a vacuum reading of 28in. of mercury is reached. For six hours this temperature and vacuum are maintained, ensuring complete purification. Thus in addition to being perfectly cleaned, the vehicle is thoroughly fumigated.
The following paper was awarded the £5 cash prize in the Magazine's recent competition on the subject: “What has been the Greatest Feat in New Zealand?”
The Cenotaph, Wellington, New Zealand.
“Impossible” would have been the unhesitating and almost unanimous answer if, say, the London “Times” had asked in July, 1914: “Can New Zealand, the furthest outpost of the British Empire, with a total adult population of under one million, organise, equip, and despatch half-way round the world, a fighting force of 100,000 men in the event of a big European war involving the Empire.”
Yet history has proved entirely wrong those who would have answered thus. The feat Was accomplished: accomplished in spite of difficulties and obstacles that appeared almost insuperable; not merely accomplished, but carried out so efficiently that to New Zealand belongs the proud distinction of having been the only country represented in the Great War which was able systematically and regularly to supply reinforcements sufficient to maintain its Division at fighting strength to the very last day of the war. But more than this: thanks to the splendid spirit, discipline and general behaviour of the New Zealand men and women who went overseas in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, the name, New Zealander, stands to-day honoured and respected throughout the world.
Surely this is the greatest feat in New Zealand's brief history! Think of it! An Expeditionary Force of 100,000 men, with a full complement of doctors, nurses, chaplains, etc., and two splendidly equipped hospital ships! Consider the problems of transportation both on the railways in New Zealand and by ships overseas. Consider also the thousand and one details of organisation involved, including even such minor, but very essential items, as the collection and despatch of sand-bags for trench making on Gallipoli, and sheep-skin waistcoats for the soldiers at Salonika and elsewhere: all now matters of history, forgotten by most people, but at the time matters of the utmost moment, and each one claiming and receiving its full share of attention.
Remember also the hitherto undreamed of financial operations rendered necessary by the war, and the marvellous response of the people of New Zealand in connection with the raising of the requisite war loans, patriotic funds, etc. Most of these operations were carried out without precedent to guide those in authority. Arrangements made perhaps months in advance had sometimes to be scrapped in a few hours, and yet the business in hand—the winning of the war—had to be pressed on at all costs. But with steadfastness, courage and fixity of purpose, New Zealand did its part manfully and well.
The Commissioner was due to visit the Western Division, and the enginemen were keen to have a western engine to haul his train from Sydney to Bathurst, as well as further out.
Their fancy engine was No. 717, a “P” class flier that could skate up the Brewongle bank with a heavy train behind her. But she wanted an overhaul. So she was sent down to Eveleigh Shops for special attention. When she rolled out on to the road again she looked like a flapper with her war-paint on. In her preliminary runs she might have lived up to her fast appearance had she not developed a hummer of a hot-box.
The Commissioner's train came west with a Sydney engine and crew. And Jonah took charge of it west of Bathurst with his old 703. This combination was fast enough for anything, for Jonah insisted that the scientific way to make time was to do it uphill. If his fireman disagreed, as being the most interested party with a perfect right to speak, Jonah got another fireman.
Still, the division was sore that their flash 717 had gone to the pack. And no one was sorrier than the loco. super. She was his pet of the round house, and he had men working on her all the time the Commissioner was west, in hopes of having her ready to take the special east when the big man returned. She was run and schooled and tried in every way. But always, after she had run 100 miles or so, the hot-box came back.
The time was getting short, too, and at last it became evident that the refractory engine would not be ready for the run east. It was a surprise to everyone in the steam shed, then, when the super. ordered her to be ready. When objections were raised he said:
“717 will go, with Jonah driving.”
And that settled it.
The spick and span special clocked into Bathurst ten minutes late. Jonah had nothing to do with that part of her run. He had been messing about 717 all the morning, getting her into a good humour, as only Jonah could get an engine into tune. The super's. orders to him for the Sydney run were luridly explicit.
“Run at timetable speed. Don't try to pick up the lost time!”
Jonah nodded and took his engine out. He went through Brewongle on the grade of 1 in 75, with the car wheels humming a new song for that bit of section. The Commissioner looked out on a curve, at the clean, shining engine, and remarked jokingly on the speed:
“Looks like dirty work at the crossroads,” he said, and asked who was on the engine. When they told him Jonah, he sighed and looked at his watch.
Wambool saw Jonah almost happy. He had picked up two minutes. The other eight, dangling invisibly before his engine's pilot like an imaginary carrot, kept Jonah from being quite happy. No. 717 was legging it up the grade of the Marrangaroo Loop like a bygone “Blow-fly” buzzing her 7-foot drivers on the western plains. She popped into and out of the tunnels like a cork gone mad. All Jonah cared was that he had recovered five of the lost minutes.
“The fool,” Mac, the Super., said. “He'll break out that hot-box again, and we'll have to call on Sydney for an engine to haul her home.”
A stop for refreshments was made at Mount Victoria. Jonah didn't bother about refreshments. He was too busy hosing down a lovely hot-box. He did a number of things to 717 to fit her for the remainder of her flight against time. Even his fireman never knew all that Jonah did to his engine. It seemed that he and she were familiar in a sort of mechanical spiritualism. Engines would do for him what no other man ever dreamed they could do.
There was a little delay in starting again, and the Commissioner's secretary and the conductor went along to inquire.
“Waiting?” bellowed Jonah at the smart young man. “Who's waiting? Sonny, by the time you get back to your reserved compartment, we'll be away.”
The conductor had a stiff arm for weeks from the “yank” he got as he swung on to the rear as it ripped past; the secretary being in a nearer car just managed to fall into it as 717 got away. She was after the miles like a man-eater, with her throttle wide open. Through the mountain stations they galloped. When the grades became steadily down hill the speed grew to a dizzy 65 miles an hour, the wheels roaring, roaring, roaring, like a cataract in a mountain gorge. The 717's hot-box was getting hotter and hotter. It was like a blazing beacon at Penrith. They were talking about it over the wires long before Strathfield was reached. And the amazed signalman saw a stout, sturdy driver, leaning out from 717's running board, with a hose in his hand, squirting water on to the hot bearing as the engine romped along with the smart special behind her.
Jonah had picked up all the lost time. He had disobeyed orders to do so, but the result justified the means. For the Commissioner's special reached Central Station right on time, and it had come all the way from Bourke with western engines hauling it.
“How did you do it?” Mac, the super., asked, when Jonah was back at the Bathurst steam shed, coddling up his old 703.
“Do it? Why I just did it. She's not a bad bit of an engine is that 717, though she needs a good talking to pretty often. But, man, I knew she'd do it all the time with Billy Goode shovelling.”
No heroic episode in New Zealand's history surpasses in fame the siege and defence of Orákau Pa, where the Kingite Maoris made their last stand in the Waikato War, and no call to valour equals in dramatic inspiration the defiant reply of the garrison to the British General's demand for surrender. The chief figure in the defence, Rewi Maniapoto, was the most vigorous and uncompromising of the Maori Nationalist leaders throughout the war. He and his near kinsmen, whose moving narratives are condensed into this article, were known to the writer from his early years on the sacred soil of Orākau battlefield and the King Country frontier.
Rewi Maniapoto (Manga).
This photo was taken when Rewi visited Auckland twenty years after the war. He died in 1894.
The present main road from Te Awamutu towards Arapuni is the Via Sacra of the Waikato, for it followed the old army track to Orākau. This cross-section of historic ground is not by any means the only part of the great southward route rich in human associations. There are stories all the way from Auckland, for it is all more or less the trail of the soldier and the pioneer. But in more than usual measure authentic hero-tradition steeps the farm lands from Paterangi and Te Awamutu to Orākau and the Puniu River. In some ten miles of the old road and the new is concentrated the memory of the final scenes in the conquest of the Waikato, just on seventy years ago. It must be a very dull traveller who does not wonder now and again about the human background of the country through which he passes, or who, if he knows anything at all about the past, does not feel some stirring of the imagination along the quickly-changing highway. Even in the most serenely peaceful places it was not always butterfat.
Kihikihi township, midway between Te Awamutu and Orākau, was before the war the headquarters village of the powerful Ngati-Maniapoto tribe. Like Orākau, and the neighbouring beautiful farm country of Rangiaowhia, it was a land of abundant food, a place of rich soil and great crops. The Maoris grew wheat and ground the corn in their own flourmills, driven by waterpower on the streams, and everywhere there were the most prolific of peach groves. Every village was embowered in peach trees. In Kihikihi stood the tribal council-house, called by the famous ancestral name “Hui-te-Rangiora.” In that carved whare-runanga Rewi Maniapoto, the fighting head of the tribe, and his fellow-chiefs held their council meetings, debated Kingite politics, and planned the campaigns of Taranaki and Waikato. The great house went up in flames when General Cameron's conquering army invaded these Waipa Valley lands in the early part of 1864, and Ngati-Maniapoto were driven out of their ancient homes and forced across the classic river Puniu into the territory that became known as the King Country. Then came Orākau; on that greatly prized garden-land a band of men—and women, too—fought their last despairing fight for a broken cause. They lost the battle, but they won an enduring name, and won the admiration and affection of their Pakeha antagonists, for their amazing bravery, devotion and self-sacrifice.
And nearly twenty years after the war, the State restored to Rewi a measure of his mana over the old home. A Government house was built for him on a piece of land close to the site of his destroyed council-whare, and to that house Ngati-Maniapoto, with touching speech and
The Right Hon. Sir John E. Gorst.
(Died 1916.)
From a photo in Christchurch when he revisited New Zealand in 1906.
Rewi Maniapoto, as I remember him, was a man of rather small, compact build, quick-moving, keen-eyed, an active man even in his old age, a complete contrast to his fellow-chieftain, the great orator Wahanui—the Maori Demosthenes as someone once called him—who weighed 24 stone and could never find a pair of trousers big enough for him in the country stores. Rewi was a warrior born. He marched on his first fighting expedition when he was not yet fourteen years old—the Maori boy was often initiated into the arts of war when he was about twelve. This first war-path of his, with an army of his people, was an attack on Pukerangiora, the great stronghold of the Taranaki tribes. That was in the era of cannibal warfare in 1832. Twenty-eight years later, he was the most determined of the chiefs who led the attack on No. 3 Redoubt, in the Waitara campaign. Fifty of his comrades fell in that desperately brave attempt to carry a British earthwork with the tomahawk. He fought on many fields in North Taranaki; then in 1863 he turned his attention northward.
Te Awamutu, with its mission and Government establishment, was an outpost of Pakeha influence in the heart of the Maori country. Young John Gorst (afterwards Sir John), lately come from England, was there as Governor Grey's officer, half magistrate, half school superintendent; he carried on a pro-Government propaganda with his little newspaper, the “Pihoihoi Mokemoke,” a vigorous counterblast to the Kingite gazette “Hokioi,” which the chief Patara te Tuhi and his brother Honana printed at Ngaruawahia, the Maori capital. King Tawhiao and Wiremu Tamehana tolerated Gorst; not so Rewi. In his fiery way he marched a war-party of his tribe down to Te Awamutu, seized the objectionable printing press and type, thrust Gorst out (or rather forced his recall by the Governor), and sent his printing gear off to Auckland after him. This precipitated the Waikato War.
Rewi was determined to have a final decision by force of arms. He and his cousin, Tupotahi—a man of like physique and energetic character to himself—made a recruiting expedition to the distant Urewera Country. There by his thrilling appeals and his chanted war songs he infused a fighting spirit into the mountain men—indeed, they did not need much urging, although they had no quarrel with the Pakeha. They would go far for the sheer love of using gun and tomahawk. So it came about that presently considerably more than a hundred Urewera warriors were on the battle trail in Waikato; at Orākau there were nearly a hundred and forty of them, and they furnished the backbone of the defence there.
No need here to repeat the story of the gradual forcing back of the Kingites, from fort to fort and camp to camp. I take up the story on the gentle mound of Rangataua, at Orākau, the Place of Trees. There, at the end of March, 1864, three hundred and ten Maoris of various tribes, with many women among them—and even some children—mustered to build a kind of challenge redoubt, a final gesture of defiance and of love for the lands they were losing. (The Urewera, it was true, were not in danger of losing any land, but they were ready to give their lives in the cause of their fellow-Maoris.) Rewi really was forced into the desperate affair against his own better judgment. He had his doubts from the beginning; he saw with the eye of a practised soldier the unsuitability of the site which the old men had selected for a pa. The venerable Te Paeata, chief of Ngati-Tekohera and Ngati-Raukawa, struck his staff on the ground at Orākau and said: “This is my land; let me die here.” Rewi urged the Urewera to return to their mountains. But their leader replied: “We are carrying heavy burdens [guns and ammunition] and we must use them; we have come a long way.” Of Rewi's own tribe there were not more than fifty; the rest remained southward of the Puniu.
All the shrewd Rewi's advice was in vain; the Urewera and West Taupo and Orākau men were resolved on the last fight. So he reluctantly consented to the general wish. Once
The Maori redoubt, a small and really insignificant earthwork, was about eighty feet in length by forty feet in width. It was a rectangular entrenchment, with inner and outer trenches, some interior dug-outs and shallow covered ways, and a low parapet, outside of which a post and rail fence around part of the little fort made a further obstacle, but a flimsy one. The diggers were working there as busy as bees under Rewi's direction when a military surveyor at Kihikihi descried through his theodolite telescope the flashing of the spades and shovels in the sunshine, and reported it to the commander of the troops.
“We were at prayers outside the pa in the early morning,” said Tupotahi, Rewi's cousin and lieutenant, in describing to me the siege and defence, “and had our hands over our eyes, so, when I looked up and saw the look-out on the parapet beckoning to me and pointing, and there, looking in the direction of Kihikihi I saw the fixed bayonets of the soldiers glittering in the sun. The army was marching against us. So we ran to our stations, each tribe, loaded our guns, and prepared for the battle that we all felt was a battle of desperation [whakamomori]. Still we were in good spirits; we were elated at the prospect of a battle in which we would uphold our names and defend our rights to the land of our ancestors.” The tattooed veteran described the moving events of the three days’ defence. He and Te Huia Raureti and their surviving comrades all gave Rewi the credit for the management of the defence. He was in supreme command. It was Rewi who gave the first orders of defence, “Fire, the outer line,” “Fire the inner line,” when the British infantry made the first charge against the redoubt, and the Maori volleys swept the glacis.
For three days and two nights the Maoris held the fort, a noble three hundred and ten against six times their number of well-armed, well-fed soldier foes. The siege began on the morning of March 31; it ended late in the afternoon of April 2. “We lived in a circle of fire and smoke,” said Paitini, a man of the Urewera, who was severely wounded there. There was a supply of food, but the water was exhausted by the end of the first night. To the rifle fire of hundreds of soldiers, a bombardment with two six-pounder Armstrong guns was added, and on the third day hand-grenades were thrown into the pa from the head of a flying-sap dug up to the northern outwork. Ringed with a line of steel, earthworks battered by shell fire, men, women and little children tortured with thirst, the valorous little band held out; there was no thought of surrender. The defenders ran short of ammunition for their double and single-barrel guns, so short that in the night firing they used small pieces of apple and manuka wood as bullets, saving their lead for the day-time. They repulsed repeated charges, and Rewi directed sorties from the redoubt.
On the second morning of the siege, a thick fog enveloped the battlefield. The straits of the defenders were so serious that Tupotahi made request of the council of chiefs that the pa should be abandoned under cover of the fog. The council debated this, and decided to hold the fort. This was the announcement made by Rewi, which clinched the decision:
“Listen to me, O chiefs of the Runanga and all the tribes! It was we who sought this battle, wherefore then should we retreat? This is my thought: Let us abide by the fortune of war. If we are to die, let us die in battle; if we are to live, let us survive on the field of battle.”
“So,” said Tupotahi, continuing his narrative, “we all remained to continue the fight. The fog presently lifted from the battlefield, and then again began the firing.”
By that evening, the sufferings of the garrison had become intense. Dead and wounded were lying about the pa. Rewi now considered it advisable to evacuate the place in the night. But the Taupo men and the Urewera were stubborn in their decision to remain and continue the fight to the death. “So be it,” said Rewi.
The third morning dawned in the haze that presaged a hot day. Tupotahi now proposed
Railwayman: “Wonderful smoke this National Tobacco. I believe it is the healthiest tobacco on the market.“
Man behind the Counter: “Yes, I smoke it myself. Apart from the fact that the tobacco is one hundred per cent. in quality, it is produced by a company that is one hundred per cent. New Zealand. I believe that company pays hundreds of thousands to the Government in freight and taxes and employs over a thousand workers. Why, dash it all, the more we smoke the better for the country; and the loyal way the company sticks to the Railways in fares and freight, helps to keep the railwaymen in their jobs.”
The morning haze swept away; the roar of the Armstrongs and the crack of rifles and carbines answered the bang of the Maori shotguns. It is recorded that forty thousand rounds of Enfield ammunition were fired by the troops in the siege. (No wonder we youngsters found bullets in the ground turned up by the plough, and explored the scarred old peach trees with our pocket knives for bits of lead.) The Maoris were of necessity far more sparing of their powder and lead; still they made the troops keep close to cover. But the sap, the artillery and the hand-grenades spelled the doom of Orākau. The end was near.
The story of that afternoon of April the second, 1864, imperishably remains as an inspiration to deeds of courage and fortitude. No-where in history did the spirit of pure patriotism blaze up more brightly than in that little earthwork redoubt, torn by shellfire and strewn with dead and dying. The grim band of heroes proudly refused the terms offered by General Cameron, who certainly did not wish to sacrifice them.
To the General's request, delivered by the interpreter from the head of the sap, the reply was delivered by a chief who was Rewi's mouth-piece: “Peace will never be made, never, never!” A further reply, in words that will forever live, was delivered: “Friend, I shall fight against you for ever and ever!” (in the Maori, “E hoa, ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake!“)
The interpreter, Mr. Mair (afterwards Major) said: “That is well for you men, but it is not right that the women and children should die. Let them come out.”
A noble-looking woman, the chieftainess Ahumai, made reply: “If the men are to die, the women and children will die also!”
So went on the hopeless fight, but not for much longer. Rewi gave the word; his warriors loaded their guns with their last cartridges, and with the women and children in their midst, they charged out in a body, going at a steady trot at first, until the amazed soldiers opened a fearful fire upon them. That retreat through the fern and swamp to the Puniu River and beyond was, like the defence of the pa, full of deeds of gallantry and self-sacrifice. Rewi himself was surrounded by a small bodyguard of his devoted kinsmen; one of those gallant fellows, his nephew, Te Huia Raureti, still lives on the Puniu banks, a white-headed veteran of over ninety, the very last of the warriors of his clan who fought through to safety that day of mingled gloom and glory.
When the sun went down on Orākau a hundred and sixty Maoris lay dead on the battlefield and on the line of flight to the border river. More than half the garrison, and of the survivors, half, probably, were wounded. Of the British, seventeen were killed and fifty-two wounded. There is a lament of Ngati-Maniapoto for their dead in Taranaki that also applies to Orākau:
So fought Rewi his last fight for his people and his country. He survived to live in peace and honour in near neighbourhood with his Pakeha antagonists. We on the old frontier lived on the very ground that was salted down with the flesh and blood and bones of scores of the gallant dead, the men—and women too—of Orākau. Cattle graze on that sacred soil; maybe the present owner wonders why years of cultivation have not smoothed out that rough bit of turf. Forty men and women were buried there, within the fence on the north side of the road as you drive over Orākau. Their parapets were just tumbled in on them. When the trench graves were filled in, the clenched hand of a Maori protruded above the ground, and a soldier trampled on it to tread it under. The last gesture! Defeated, shot and bayoneted; dead, but unconquerable.
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When the reader opened his “New Zealand Times,” in Wellington, on Monday, 25th September, 1905, and read that an old, inoffensive Chinaman had been foully murdered in Haining Street the night before, he did not know that the motive for the murder was the advertising of a book that the murderer had written. The sensation was intense, and there appeared to be a total lack of motive.
The mystery, however, was soon solved. A letter had been received by the Governor from a man acknowledging having done the killing; but before the letter was made public the man himself walked into the police station and calmly, as if he were buying a pound of tea, told the watch house constable that he had committed the crime, and handed over the revolver which he had used to effect his purpose.
The man who had made the call was Edward Lionel Terry. He was at once placed under arrest. The story then gathered up by the police was a strange one, and the trial and the happenings after the trial must indeed be unique.
As soon as the news had been cabled Home, Lionel Terry's father arranged an interview with the “Daily Mirror,” and to make the interview more interesting, supplied the reporter with a photograph of himself and his son Lionel. The interview was an extraordinary one, and can only be described, in all the circumstances, as eccentric. It began with the announcement of the fact that the partnership subsisting between the father and Lionel as land agents in the West End of London had come to an end by effluxion of time. From the facts revealed in the interview, Lionel had not been near the business for some years, and even when he had worked with his father he had been there for only a short space of time. Mr. Terry, senior, supplied a description of Lionel as a fine looking man about 6ft. 3in. in height, handsome and dark, aged 31 years. He said he was descended from a French family of refugees, and that Lionel had the advantage of descent from the great Napoleon.
The connection was apparently a cherished one, for Mr. Terry said:—“Sir Hubert Jernyngham was amongst those who have remarked upon my likeness to Napoleon, and now the inflexible will of the conqueror of Europe has been reproduced in my son. I never knew him to turn aside from any course he started on. Popular as he was, no one could bend or break his will. He would have his own way.”
It transpired from this extraordinary interview that Lionel was born at Sandwich; he was one of eleven children. Apparently he was 31 years old when he committed the crime on the old Chinaman. He was educated at Merton College, Wimbledon. At seventeen he was placed in the office of the West Indian Gold Mining Co., but soon tired of an indoor life, and, without his father's knowledge, enlisted in the army. His father, who seems to have been
The wander lust next took him to Germany, thence to Dominica, New York, Honolulu, and British Columbia. It was while he was in British Colombia, his father said, that Lionel first expressed publicly his antagonism to the Chinese. His father is reported to have said to the “Daily Mirror”:
“In a letter sent to the ‘Naimamo Free Press’ in January, 1901, he (Lionel) declared that the lack of employment was due to the unscrupulous actions and inordinate greed of the Premier of British Colombia, who would conceal beneath his much vaunted anti-Mongolian mask a despicable scheme to force, by means of poverty and starvation, the men on whom future generations of Canada depend to accept Chinamen's wages.” Mention is made at the interview that Lionel had written two books, the first was called “God is Gold,” and the latter “The Shadow.” It was for the purpose of advertising the latter book that Terry had killed the poor old Chinaman in Wellington.
The story of the crime was told to His Honour, Sir Robert Stout, Chief Justice of New Zealand, and a common jury, on Monday, 21st November, 1905. Mr. Bell (now Sir Francis Bell), who had been Crown Solicitor for years, prosecuted. The prisoner refused point blank to have counsel to defend him. Mr. Jellicoe had a watching brief on behalf of the Chinese community, but this, of course, did not entitle him to take any active part in the trial.
The first witness at the trial told the Court that he was standing in Taranaki Street, opposite Haining Street. He noticed a tall man, wearing a light overcoat, walk along the street, and as he turned on his way, he raised his arm, fired a shot, then calmly walked on and disappeared into Ingestre Street. Then Joe Duck went into the box, and after having been sworn that he would tell the truth, and that if he did not, might his life be blotted out as the light went out of a lighted match held before him (which he blew out), told how he was standing in the street and saw a tall man suddenly shoot Joe Kum Young.
The story was then told how Joe Kum Young was hurried off to hospital where, in the course of an hour, he died. The Superintendent of the hospital, Dr. Ewart told the Court that the Chinaman had died from the effects of a bullet wound which had entered the back of the head and gone through the brain. Another Chinese gave evidence to the effect that Lionel Terry had visited a house in Haining Street two days before the killing and had wrongly accused the inmates of gambling.
The sensation of the trial was supplied by Constable Young, who said he was on duty in the watch house on Monday, September 25th. About 9.25 a.m. Terry walked into the room and said: “I came to tell you I am the man who shot the Chinaman last night. I take an interest in alien immigration and I took this means of bringing it under notice.” The Constable then called in Inspector Ellison, to whom Terry repeated his story. The Inspector wrote it down and Terry willingly signed it. He was then charged with the murder, the Inspector said, and then he added: “Just before I charged him he handed me two books called ‘The Shadow,’ and he said, “If you read these you will understand the position.’”
When the time came at the trial for Lionel Terry to make his defence, he did not go into the box,