HONOR AND GLORY. But at Cheap Rates.

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 51, 22 June 1901, Page 8

HONOR AND GLORY. But at Cheap Rates.

THE grimy khaki soldier is a drug in the market. He is no longer the feted and caressed.. While the fever of the war was over all things, the man who contracted fever of disease at Capetown, and took the next boat home, was banquetted and surfeited with good things, and had a bright time generally for his bravery in striking a wandering microbe. Things have changed since those days. It is certain that the true soldier hates the clatter that has distinguished the hoinc-comings of the past, and would lathei dispense with it, but he could put up with a modicum of justice. •* ♦ ♦ Is the soldier of to-day treated fairly ' We emphatically say no ' The man who returns now with a piece of shell in him, or the seeds of malaria, making life a periodical misery, is not so much considered as the well-fed and badly-dressed boy in khaki who has come to keep the crowd away from Royalty. Various small drafts of invalids and timeexpired men are continually arriving, and, having arrived m this colony, apparently wish they had not. Why ? Generally no one seems to know, or care, that they have arrived, and they, having gone to a great deal of trouble to find if they have any claim on the Government, find, to their dismay, that the Government will "go into the matter" at some indistinct future time, and ascertain if the persons in khaki are fit subjects to be allowed to live and have their being in a colony that seems to regret ever having sent them away at all, seeing that it does not know how to treat them when they come back, or pay them for their services. # ♦ • We presume that they will be paid m due time, when the Government has "gone into the accounts/' a process that seems to have been occupying it since a remote period of last year. First Contingent men, who were feted enough in all conscience, and most of whom are now peacefully occupied, are still awaiting a settlement of their claims to pay. Perhaps, in civil employ, the men would seek redress by the usual law court methods, but, apparently, most of the men are too frightened at the tremendous consequences they might entail by suing the fearsome Defence Office, to do anything but wait. It has been proved that during the absence of the men, their friends are apprised of any casualty that may befal them, but that, having survived, have to return home and strike out for themselves. • • • We do not advocate treating the men as if they were unparalleled heroes. They merely do what their forefathers did, but we consider there should be some systematic way of dealing with the men, and their accounts, when they return to the country which enthused so much at the outset A man should not be required to become a civilian immediately on his arrival, and thus pay his own expenses. He has been frequently compelled to borrow money to defray current expenses, while the Defence Department owed him sums up to £70. The office discharges

its men like no other country. It gives no particulars as to conduct during service, it is as careful of its parchment as of its pence, and is more abrupt than even the War Office. The men are not legally discharged, even by the abbreviated parchment. Mere civilians would refuse to accept discharge if the price of work done was not handed over with their dismissal. The Government does not do this. It acts on the principle that "whatever is, is right," and had its soldiers, who have at least done their duty, been dependent on their pay for subsistance, not one but would have long since perished from starvation.