WET CANTEEN AT SLING

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 206, 20 May 1918, Page 4

WET CANTEEN AT SLING

ALLEGATIONS DENIED. Serious statements to the effect that there was excessive drinking among the men of tho New Zealand Expeditionary Force at the wet canteen at Sling: Camp were published in an Otago newspaper, the "Tuapeka Times," in December last. The statements were nindo in a letter from a soldier who professed to write of what he had seen. Tho Minister of Defence referred tho matter to the officers commanding the battalions at Sling Camp, and he has just received replies to his inquirios. Ak the battalion officers contradict the statement. In one of the battalions there had been ono case of drunkenness during a period of three months, end the man had obtained the liquor not in the canteen, but while he vas absent from the camp on leave. In another regiment there had been only 16 cases in a year, in a body of men of average training strength of 1200. The reports legardinj: the other regiments were similar. All the allegations of excessive drinking were denied absolutely. A Presbyterian chaplain wrote of the allegations" as follows:—"I must protest against the defamation of our soldiers and the alarming of their New Zealand friends by the publication of such misloading, and therefore pernicious, correspondence." A regimental medical officer wrote t "During the time that I have been attached to the battalion as regimental medical officer—close on six months—l have never seen a case of drunkenness. Sty position affords me ample ipportiifa itr of seeing thwe conditions (ns alleged by the contributor to the 'Tuapeka Times'), if thay exist."