EXCESSES OF BRITISH TROOPS IN THE TRANSVAAL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 104, 1 May 1880, Page 1

EXCESSES OF BRITISH TROOPS IN THE TRANSVAAL.

The following article commenting on Dr Russell's charges against British troops, ia from the Pall Mall Gazelle % — Even unaccredited by the wellkaown and respected name which is subscribed to it, the letter published on Feburosry 10, in the Daily Telegraph, under the heading of " British Troops in the Transvaal,' 1 would demand the most serious attention of the public. Signed as it is, however, by a writer who is known throughout Europe as a trustworthy and competent observer of military matters, it would indeed be folly to pass it by unnoticed. Dr W. H. Bußsell is no young and reckless journalist with a reputation made by sensational writing; ha uas nothing to gain and much to loss by committing himself to an exaggerated account oi facts which he may have himself witnessed, nor is he a maa likely to lend a too credulous ear to the teatimony of others. And what is more, he is f not bo regarded, either at home or abrnud. Whatever he writaa upon a subject

with which he is bo familiar as thai of the condition of the British army will be read, and will be believed, not only in England but throughout Europe; and sinoe he has felt it his duty to give publicity to the statement which appeared on February 10, it is too late, even if it were other wiae advisable, to attempt to hush it up. So truly appalling, however — we use the word deliberately— is the story he tells us that, with all our reason to trust the sobriety of his judgement, it is impossible not to hope that he may have been deceived. But it is equally impossible to suppose that he can have been so throroughly misled as to make the actual truth of the matter even tolerable to English ears. Inaccuracies and overstatements there may be here and there;bot unhappily his story will stand a very large abatement indeed, and yet present such a picture of the morale of our troopß in South Africa as must fill the mind of every Englishman with humiliation and alarm. la a letter written from Pretoria on Oct. 10, Dr Rusaeil stated that " if the provisions of the new code of military law be applied to the British army in its present state in any country which is situated like Natal or the Transvaal, it will be utterly impossible for the officers to maintain decipline." The statements in this letter were brought by the Commander-in-Chief in England to the notice of Sir Garnet Wolseley, by whom they were characterised as "gross exaggerations" and," transparent untruths." Dr Russell now produces his evidence in support of them.' He made the assertion about the officers being unable to maintain decipline, "because those officers told him so, and because he saw that what they had said was true." While at Durban and Pietermaritzburg, he had heard much from officers of " scares amongst the troops in Zululand," of " wild alarms and of outbursts o* musketry and cannonading at nothing, at places and on occasions which, if challenged he will name." He said nothing of these things, attributing them to the youth and inexperience of many of the men composing the mass of our battalions ; and the " rows and evidences of relaxed discipline " of which he afterwards heard he put down to the abandon caused among young troops by a demoralising kind oi war, and by their joy fulness I at their return to comparative civilization." Shortly afterwafdi, however, he left Pietermaritzburg and went up country, and he continues his story thus :—'* Along the road I heard stories of the indiscipline and excesses of detachments of men on the march. I found that officers in command of stations were obliged to put the adjacent town and villages * out of bounds,' so that soldiers could not visit them without passes, as if they were ticket-of-leave men. * * * * At Newcastle I was informed by a distinguished soldier, who has recently been rewarded by his sovereign ' for his gallantry in the war, ' that he had never been in so much danger throughout that war as he was the other night in Utrecht, when the soldiers of the — th Regiment attacked the hotel in which he waß lodged, and smashed in the witdows with huge paving stones, because they were refused drink. He got out of bed and crept tinder it t<^ escape, and was rolled over by, a sioae like a rabbit ; he then got a revolver and called upon the landlord to fire, and the. fellows went away/ On visiting Utrecht, a large store with broken windows and doors was pointed out to me as having been wrecked by the soldiers ; ' and the landlord of one of the hotels there described I ' an attack on bis premises as if they were undergoing a eeigo in due form." While he was at the same place, another officer in command of a regiment on the march "adopted the device of ordering a supply of spirits to be brought out of the field, so that the men who so desired might get drunk in the open, out of sight. And. they did in some degree, bat not all uosesn, . . . . The mess stores of Sir Garnet Wolaeley'a own personal staff were stolen in his own head-quarters camp, and' the wine and liquor drunk by the men around him. At Pretoria he met an English gentleman, who is k one of the principal merchants in South Africa, Accompanied by his wife. '

The picture they drew of the state of things in the town of Heidelberg filled him with indignation. " There was not," they said, " a single store in the town which had not been broken into and wrecked by the troops, and details were given of robberies small and great, from chickens up to the church clook. But the lady's statement was still more painful, for she said "she was afraid of remaining, in her house by herself, and she knew of soveral who were thinking oi leaving, and going to the coast." There were officers present who admitted and ' deplored the existence of outrages " which they could not adequately punish, as they could not turn out the few men who committed them with «s ignominy from the service they disgraced, and they could not flog them, as they were not before the enemy/ ..... At Middleburg some men of a party of one regiment passing through attacked the principal inkeeper, knocked him down, took 10 or 12 sovereigns out of his pocket, and beat him and his barman. They were not punished, because the officers promised the inkeeper compensation. I heard the man make the statement before the Administrator. I was present when Colonel Lanyon later on inspected the house of the same person, Mr Kofcse, who is the most influential Boer in the place, after an attack upon it by the picket which had been detached from the adjoining camp to protect the town, and saw where the windows of the room in which his wife was in bed had been smashed, and heard him describe the alarm of his family when the soldiers with drawn bayonets burst into his premises at night and terrified bis children out of their lives.*' The terrible picture of demoralisation needs but one touch to complete it. An officer observed to Dr. Russell that if he were to carry out his orders he would not have a man for duty. On being asked why, he replied, that " one half of his men would be guarding the other half in the guard tents, or marching them along the road under arrest." Such is the condition to which a mistaken military policy, co-operating with foolish civilian sentimentalism is said to have reduced the British, army. We know that short service had given us an army of boys ; we are now told that it has given us an army of mutineers, and this at a time when the old stern methods of control are being continually relaxed, and military authority deprived of powers which it needs more urgently than ever.