VON VELTHEIM’S TRAGEDY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9116, 8 April 1908, Page 7

VON VELTHEIM’S TRAGEDY.

an unwanted man. A striking article on Yon Yel+.heim, who was sentenced to twenty rears’ penal servitude for threatening Mr Joel-was. written hy Mr H. Hamilton Fyfe in the Daily Mail. years’ penal servitude! It is hard —it is impossible—to realise “hat it means. ‘■•A just sentence, havond doubt; for the offence of vdiich Von Yeltheim was convicted i« the-gravest next to murder that can he committed. Yet the first thought which came into my mind TV’hen I heard it was, ‘What a W ?‘ B You Yeltheim’s life is practically over. Next December he will be fifty years old. When his sentence is completed he will be close on Lventy. The tall, straight figure will be bent 'and frail. The thick, T ar fc hair will be thin and grey. The eyes which surveyed the Court with firm gaze will be rheumy and dim A man of splendid physique and what Mr Gill called ‘extraordinary ability’ has rubbed out the fair prospects with which he started, has robbed the world of the energy which ought to have been turned to •aseful ends, has thrown his life Ss y pASSION FOR ADVENTURE. “Perhaps you will say: ‘Why sauandor words on such a vulgar criminal, a blackmailer, a bigamist? He has got what he richly deserved, and there’s an end of it.’ But does that represent quite all there is to be aaid? This man was not an ordinary criminal. His very appearance told me that. He has had a strange, eventful history. He was an ‘adventurer,’ yes; but he was the kind of adventurer who might have made a name and ended his days in honour instead of disappearing down the steps of the Old Bailey dock to penal servitude for twenty years. v “The truth about Yon Yeltheim is that he was a type of man for whom the world of to-day has no use. He was born with a passion .for adventure. If he had lived in the sixteenth century he would have joined Raleigh or Frobisher, and been a buccaneer. In the seventeenth century he would have ‘trailed a pike’ in. the Low Countries, and Bought the adventurous life wherever mercenaries were wanted for foreign wars. “It was as a mercenary that he began the career of restless wandering which has come so abruptly to an end. He served for a time both in the German Army and the German Navy. But he saw no service, and when he was twenty-seven he rushed off and enlisted as a volunteer on the aid* of Bulgaria in the war of 1885, He fought against the Servian troops in two battles,and acquitted himself well. IP HE HAD CAUGHT STANLEY.

“Unfortunately this active employment of his energies could not last long, and there was no other war for him to take part in when that one was over. However, the next most adventurous occupation to fighting is exploration. Accordingly we descry him next walking across Australia through the terrible deserts of the Never-Never Land. By the time this journey was over the Stanley expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha was about starting. Ydti Veltheim felt that this was just the kind of job for him. He hurriedly took ship from Perth, Western Australia (where he thad just been married), hoping to catch Stanley at Zanzibar. But he reached there too late. The expedition had set out. He was at a loose end again. .“That was the turning-point in his career. If he had caught Stanley and been taken on, his life would have been altogether different. Now for several years he drifted—and deteriorated, longing for adventures all the time. “What a waste 1”