Untitled

Shannon News, 9 October 1923, Page 4

The farm lands adjacent to Matamata continue to draw favourable comment from visitors. A party of American doctors who are on their way to attend the Melbourne Scientists’ Conference, in passing through, were heard to compare the outlook to that of Illinois. In conversation they said that they had travelled both Islands of New Zealand, but had nowhere seen the growth of grass as on the country between Morrinsville and Matamata. “New Zealand is a marvellous country, but with one outstanding bad feature,” they said, the railway facilities. One day recently (says the Dunedin Star) a cablegram announced that the Belgian. Customs authorities had kept General Godley standing for an hour in his pyjamas whilst they searched his baggage. To readers at large this would simply be a little personal touch in regard to the Ruhr occupation, perhaps leading to the hope that General Godley did not catch cold. Five hundred Cadets (or cx-Cadets) belonging to Dunedin will perceive the working out of a prophetic joke. For at the time that the General came to Dunedin in 1913, to organise the Cadet movement, there was much outcry about the Cadets having to parade in shorts. Young fellows who wore trousers all day did not feel happy et being obliged to turn out at night in what they called bathing pants. Nor did their parents approve of the idea —it seemed to them like asking for a touch of rheumatism or something worse. When the General came round 1 e was asked to remedy the grievance, but did not see his way to do anythng, and answered that it was the best thing for the boys to bring them up hardy. After a big • parade one evening there was a meeting of the Officers’ Club, and this mat-1 ter was brought up, whereupon one of the young officers, with temerity that horrified the seniors, approached General Godley and said politely but quite

plainly: “Sir, would you like to stand in your pyjamas for an hour?’’ Major This and Colonel That shuddered as the question was put. Wonder whether the General remembered the circumstances as he stood in that Belgian frontier office? May we add. to the above that the gallant, general’s discomfort was ot comparable to the double parade j nder ah Egyptian, sun-muff sed!