The boot was designed to do away with the admitted defects in the British army boot."
It embodies all the principles laid down by leading military authorities as to the best boot for universal troop wear."
The upper was made soft purposely. It was considered a stiff upper was a serious drawback in a soldier's boot."
Since the New Zealand boot was designed practically all military authorities have adopted the soft upper. Chrome leather, if well greased, will keep out water."
The shape was made anatomically correct, and here again the boots issued by Home authorities are being made on the same principle."
The boot was made lighter by about half a pound than any other service boot known. There were obvious reasons for this."
Most of the complaints about the boots are due to two causes: (1) The fact some manufacturers departed from the specifications; (2) the men themselves do not fit their feet properly, nearly always insisting upon wearing boots too short."
A marching boot should be almost an inch longer than a man's foot."
The boot was shown to the military authorities at the Intercolonial Medical Conference in Sydney, 1911, and was admitted to be the most perfect army boot they had seen.''
''It was difficult to obtain a passage from London to New York after the war broke out, as there were about 100,000 Americans stranded in London,'' remarked Colonel Charles Evans, C.M.G., Commissioner of Railways in Queensland, to a New Zealand Herald representative.
Colonel Evans arrived by the Niagara from Vancouver, after having been engaged in a study of the various railway systems of England and the Continent.
Millionaires, he said, were reported to have paid high figures for steerage passages from England to the United States.
Three special trains, crowded with passengers, were utilised to convey people from London to Liverpool to join the Olympic.
The scene on the arrival at the wharf at Liverpool was almost indescribable.
The steamer was moored in the Mersey, and the passengers were taken out to her in lighters.
Something in the nature of a prophecy was given utterance to by Mr H. D. Bedford when speaking at a Labour meeting held in the Garrison Hall last evening.
''Believe me,'' he said, ''when this war is over Germany will find that she is sitting upon a volcano.
The German people are not going to be saddled again with the military autocracy and despotism that have obtained in the past, and I am quite satisfied that, though there may not be a revolution, there will be a big social change, and it will come in other countries as well."
Britain, Russia, and France are fighting now in the cause of freedom, and this fight is going to stimulate the fight for industrial freedom and renovation."
In Russia the war will also be followed by great changes, and the burning words of Tolstoi will burst into brighter and even vivid flame in that great country."
Even in Great Britain and in New Zealand there will be changes, and I trust and believe that they will be brought about by constitutional means.''
- ODT, 21.11.1914.
