Another Army Scandal.

Manawatu Herald, 14 January 1905, Page 3

Another Army Scandal.

There is a threatened scandal in connection with the disposal of British army stores after the South African war. It has been started in a very peculiar fashion. A native employed on the Reunion Estate, a sugar plantation a few miles from Durban in Natal, was charged with stealing some tins of preserved beef from the estate, and sentenced to a fine of £lO, or three months’ hard labour. It was stated in evidence that after the war the Reunion Estate had obtained from the military authorities two hundred and fifty thousand cases of “ condemned ” tinned provisions, for the mere carting away. The cases were opened and the tins buried in the canefields, that in time they might be come manure for the sugar cane, and

it was some of these tins which had been exhumed by the natives and consumed. Further enquiries have elicited the fact that enormous quantities of so-called “ condemned ” food supplies were disposed of by the military authorities after the war to other sugar iompanies on similar terms. Of course, the cartege of such vast quantities was a considerable undertaking, the weight amount- * ing to thousands of tons. It is said that the Reunion Company kept their furnaces going for a long timewith the wood of which the cases were made, A small army of Indian coolies was employed in “ planting ” the tins all over the sugar fields, and of course this could not be done without the natives in the neighbourhood knowing something about it. In fact, there seems to be no doubt that numbers of natives have been living on this exhumed beef for months, and the significant point is that none of them have been any the worse for it. The apparent explana tion is that much, if not all, of the beef was and is still perfectly good, and that an enormous amount of public stores has been wasted.