The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, SEPT. 21, 1906.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1866, 21 September 1906, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, SEPT. 21, 1906.

The report of tlie Commissioi on the South African war stores scandal has at last been published and it affords unpleasant reading tc those who lookod upon British depart' mental administration a 3 the acme oi perfection. The report is scathingly condemnatory of the manner in which the South African commissariat has been managed, and while it does not find the leading commissioned officers who were responsible for the glaring corruption that has been fully proved to have existed, guilty of a direct share in that corruption, it adds that these gentlemen have only themselves to blame if suspicion rests upon them, for suspicion w.as warranted by their proceedings. The whole a ray of Army officers who had a ham' :n the conduct of the regrettable bu; m

condcmnod without moasuro for cither serious blunders, errors worse than blunders, gross extravagance, and inollioioncy, which opened tho door fur tho gigantio amount of corruption that characterised tho whole proceedings. That in itself was had enough, but tho fiuding of tho Commission does not oiul there, for it also allulos in anything hut complimentary terras to tho attempts made by military authorities in South Africa to thwart ana delay tho onquiry. and it charges the finance branch of tho War (Mice with

having deliberately obstructed tho enquiry, 'l'lns is, perhaps, tho point that will most interest Now Zealanders who remombor its connection with this colony in tho matter of local supplies, and it still romains a matter of obscurity whether tho enquiry went far onough in. that direction to lay bare all the wastefulness, if nothing worse, that took place in connection with those local consignments. Know-

ing, as wo now do, that tlio finance brancli of tho War Office was so un' reliable, and that largo quantities of supplies were purchased in this colony undor circumstances which, to say the least, did not accord with tho strictest methods of sound business; that no local audit of the accounts ever took place; that the only effective audit that could take place must have been

a local ono ; and that such was strenuously resisted for some reason or other that must bo left to tho imagination - knowing all these things now, can it bo said that the proper course was followed in refusing the request of the Auditor-General of this colony to audit

those accounts ? That refusal was in itself suspicious enough at the time, but in view of subsequent revelations and the serious findings and condemnations of the lioyal Commission, it becomes a thousand times more justifiably suspicious at this stage, [f we are correctly informed, these transactions, especially in regard to oats, were not conducted in the best interests of the War Office, although they may not have come strictly within the pure definition of the word

“ swindle,” and for the credit of tho colony itself it is regrettable that the local audit was not permitted. It has been said that after receipt by the Government of this colony of a cable message from the War Office authorising tho purchase of a large quantity of oats, certain firms at once operated and bought up all available supplies at a low figure then ruling ; thac immediately these transactions were complete and farmers’ granaries were cleaned out the information was published by the Government that it was prepared to buy from farmers and others for shipment to South Africa ; that only, the firms that had operated in alleged possession of prior knowledge had any oats to sell; and that they sold to the Government at a handsome profit. The names of those firms have been stated ; but one cannot blame them for buying on a certain rise, for that is only what business men do every day if they can get the chance; but the culpability, if the story is true, rests with those who allowed the information to leak into one channel while withholding it from others, indeed, if there were any who were entitled to the information first, it was the farmers who did not get it. Then the accounts went forward to the imbecile finance branch of tho War Office that knew nothing about local prices, and apparently did not care whether oats cost Is lOd per bushel or 3s 9d, so loDg as it was obtained. Anyway, somebody benefited enormously by the transaction, and as far as we know the accounts have not yet been audited. Not that it matters much whether they have or not by tho War Office imbeciles in view of what the Royal Commission has to say about them, for we are told that documents were mislaid, lost, or

even destroyed in order to smother over the negligence, corruption, and mismanagement that characterised the whole proceedings. The whole story as revealed by the Commission is a shockingly sad one, so shocking indeed that belief of its diabolical details would be impossible almost on any weaker evidence than the finding of a Commission under charter from His Majesty the King. We would have been prepared to believe such stories in connection with the Russian paign in Manchuria; but when they are brought to our own door and. left there to putrify the atmosphere it is

high time the cleansing process was commenced, as no doubt it will be now. Amid all the moral stench that has been stirred up, composed of bribery, corruption, neglect, mismanagement, and incapacity, there is but one fact that offers consolation, and that is that the Army as a whole is not impeached, and only a few of its officers are placed under the ban for minor delinquencies. These are General Lyttelton, who is blamed for ill-judged maintenance of the local contracts system, Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke for appointing a comparatively inexperienced officer to the sale department, Colonel Morgan who is blamed for introducing his brother to

a post of high emolument, and some others who are marked for ineptitude and extravagance. The estimated cost to the State of all this is set down at about two millions, which is bad enough ; but the moral stain on the nation is infinitely more serious and cannot be estimated by a measure of pounds, shillings, and pence.