MR FORBES AS A LECTURER

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1001, 23 February 1883, Page 3

MR FORBES AS A LECTURER

Reporting a lecture by Mr Forbes, a - contemporary says : “To the close the attention of the audience was rapt, the silence only occasionally broken by the spontaneous applause which followed the more striking parts of the narrative. Nothing conld well be finer in their way than the vivid word pictures illustrative of incidents, with the outlines of which the reading world is familiar, but of which so little of the details are known. Amongst these may be classed the graphic descriptions of the first battle in the Franco-Prnssian War, at Saarbrnok, interwoven with the pretty, pathetic incident of the soldier’s wedding and death ; horrible spectacle presented by Paris in the last days of - the.Commune, invested by the Yersaillists’without, and reeking: in- the blood ruthlessly-spilled by an . and" maddened’; mob ; the costly and fruitless attack on Plevna, and the decisive battle of Ulnndi, which finally dispersed the army of Cetewayo, and closed the campaign in Zulnland. The lecturer described the horrible spectacle presented at Isandnla, which he -shortly after the dreadful fight, with its hosts of dead lying un r buried bleaching in the snh, and' in syrnpathetic language told his hearers the mournful story of the death of the young Prince Imperial, and the finding of the body by the party of which he formed one. Taking a retrospective glance he sjioke of his intimacy with the sori-hf the <Napoleans ; of the “ baptism of fire” at Saarbrnck, of Jthe humiliation, death and burial of the last Emperor, and reflected on the strange turn of fortune which had Brought him to this Epot' wlibre the Prince lay dead. Whilst the lecture was thus fair of stirring passages telling of “ moving incidents by flood and field,” and *of hair-breadth ’scapes, it had its hnmorons side and this was, the more apparent when he instanced some of the disagreeables which beset -a- correspondent in a ls sti*angb country. On : The? subject of the duties.of the war correspondent in these days of telegraph and keen competition-among newspapers, as compared with what was - rcquirecl of the same class of persons in former days, Mr Forbes was very, explicit, and gave his audience an admirable insight into theewofk behind thPscehesfof whidhThe spectators knew so little. The lecture was pictorially illustrated by excellent portraits of .most of the great men to whom allusion was made.”