Arthur Brander Is 80

Years Young

From Our Own Correspondent PAPEETE, April 10.

OUR good friend, Mr. Arthur Brander, celebrated his eightieth birthday in March. That figure 80 is only a number, for Mr. Brander looks to be 60, has the straight, soldierly body of a man of 40, and the spirit of youth and good-fellowship of whatever age you will.

Mr. Brander is known by that name only to his acquaintances and on pass ports and other formal documents. To his friends he is Te-ra-tane (The Sun Man). Most of us who have lived long on Tahiti have native names. Some of them are of high-chiefly origin—and we are most proud of them.

Te-ra-tane’s name is, in very fact, of royal origin and was bestowed by Queen Pomare IV herself on the grandson of her bosom friend, Ari’i-oe-hau, high chiefess of Papara—who is the Ari’i-ta’imai of the historic “Memoirs.”

Although Mr. Brander was born on Tahiti, he has been —in every sense of the term—a man of the world. Educated in Scotland, his subsequent vocations have led him to every part of the earth —to South America, where he learned Spanish; to North America, where he established his home; to the Orient and across Siberia to Russia, where he wit nessed the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution; and to his beloved England and Scotland times without number. But, like all of Tahiti, time could not dim nor distance diminish, his love for his native land, and “O Tahiti Nui Pai’umara’a o Te Ra O Tahiti Nui Mare’are’a” (“Great Tahiti, the mounting place of the sun Great Tahiti of the golden haze”) has reclaimed him.

A number of his friends gathered, on his birthday, to do him honour. The dinner was at a country inn on the shore of Puna’auia, in the district where Mr.

Brander has his residence.

Those present included James N. Hall, Richard Delambert (American Consul), Carl Beecher, Marcel Frogier, Lewis Hirshon, —. Patrick (NZ representative), Walter G. Smith, Sidney Coster, J. Frank Stimson, Preston Moore, Scudder Mers man (American Vice-Consul).

Ross Buckley, RNZAF, formerly on the staff of Morris Hedstrom, Ltd., Suva, Fiji, has been reported missing in air opera tions. His sister, Mrs. E. R. Chivers, resides in Suva.