DR. A. MARTIN.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 201, 25 September 1916, Page 3

DR. A. MARTIN.

A GREAT EXAMPLE. Special Correspondent. WELLINGTON, Sept. 22. The death of Dr. Martin, reported yesterday from the New Zealand Stationary Hospital in France, has brought to hundreds of people here a keen sense of personal loss and to the whole commuunity a profound feeling of regret. The doctor was one or those sensitive, courageous souls to whom sacrifice was “the first element of religion” so ordered that it fulfilled all the laws and commandments. Standing at the very head of his profession with a career awaiting him that might have lead to the highest distinction and even to opulence, he renounced the ambitions. that would have inspired smaller men, and ce voted himself and his splendid gifts unstintingly to The service of humanity. Fresh from college, where he had won everything brilliant scholarship andconscientious performance could achieve, he donned khaki to play the part of a man in the Boer war. It was his experience and observation in South Africa, foilorved by years or exceptionally successful private prac tice, that left him in no doubt as to the direction in which his duty lay when the present war broke out. Not, content to rest on the magnificent services he rendered at the Marne and Aisne, La Bassee and Ypres, he returned to the front after a brief furlough spent in strenuous work here with the hope of illustoating afresh to his professional brethren and the military authorities the enormous advantage to the wounded of saving them from delay and suffering by performing major operations within the firing line. Doubtless it was in his devotion to this mission, which counted his own safety as nought, that he gave his life cheerfully and ungrudgingly for his fellows. He, indeed, has bequeathed to his country “the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.”