The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, July 15, 1915. THE AUSTRALIAN MILITARY CAMP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1424, 15 July 1915, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, July 15, 1915. THE AUSTRALIAN MILITARY CAMP.

According to reports contained in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Commonwealth Government is called upon to face similar troubles (accentuated by what is termed "the blight of officialism”) in connection with the military training camp at Liverpool (N.S. Wales) as onr Government Is faced with re Trentham. A heated debate took place in the Federal House of Representatives on Thursday, July Ist, during the course of which Mr Orchard (one of the New South Wales representatives) condemned in scathing terms the treatment of the soldiers in camp, which he declared was worse than that accorded to the prisoners in terned in the German concentration camps. The latter, he stated, were provided with new overcoats, while after being two months in camp many of the territorials had only the clothes in which they arrived, and on the eve of their departure for the front, they were told their uniforms would be served out on board the transports. The huts provided for the soldiers at Liverpool were “draughty and comfortless, and hundreds of cases of pneumonia had gone through the military hospital, and chest and throat complaints were the commonest forms of illness in the camp.” The men who passed through the military hospital complained bitterly of their treatment, and said they would sooner be dismissed than have to return to it. In the matter of equipment, Mr Orchard complained that five hundred men had only thirty rifles between them, and that they were sent on board the troopships without rifle practice. At the Liverpool camp, moreover, he stated, the men were lined up for sick parade at 6.55 a.m., and if they were not then in the ranks they had to wait until 5 o’clock before they could see the doctor, and meanwhile had to continue on duty, often at serious risk to themselves. Added to all this, Mr Orchard stated that the doctor in charge of the hospital was a German named Schlink, whose brothers were fighting in the ranks of the German Army, and who was known to the Minister (Mr Jensen) to have given expression to very disloyal sentiments only a day or two previously. From all of which it would appear

that even a labour Government is unable to give satisfaction in its control of the Defence forces.