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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1229, 20 December 1882, Page 2

The Home papers are teeming with accounts of the reception given to the returning Naval and Military forces from the Egyptian Campaign. Ovations have been made to them, Royalty has congratulated them, the country has praised and thanked them, but beyond th is and a good dinner very little else has been done for them. To our mind there is something puerile in all this florid demonstration which presents so much of tinsel and clamour, and so little of real substance, and culminates in rewarding them, like one might a growing schoolboy, with what in Colonial parlance would be termed a “good feed.” The officers leading the forces are able and prudent men. They were placed in front of serious difficulties and overcame them promptly and effectually ; and the men who acted under their orders did so obediently and with alacrity. Yet we cannot but recognise, and without any disparagement to the leaders we say it, that the men have not been adequately or proportionately rewarded; they are simply patted on the back, given a good dinner, and told to send home as much of their deferred pay as would suffice to keep their wives and children out of the workM e cannot hide sorry truths from enquiring eyes, nor, declaim and vapour as we list, can we, with the most exuberant of show and fanfaronade, prevent the stern moralist from lifting the corner of the garish draperies, and displaying the mean and flimsy framework on which they are displayed. Had England wanted to give her returning forces some substantial token of favor, what would have been easier than to have voted six months’ pay to every living man, and two years’ pay to the relatives of those who fell ? What easier than to have got together a great Patriotic Fund for the wives, widows, and orphans whom the war has bereaved ? John Bull’s requital of faithful service was wont to be substantial, but John Bull is altering in character, and not for the better. Well may the weary sailor

or soldier exclain.i “1 thank you for this roast beef and plum pudding and for your pretty reception, but I should have thought your admiration more sincere if you had done a good turn for my wife and children who are starving in a garrett whilst I am gorging myself on right Royal fare.” Depend upon it many a soldier and sailor who ate at these feasts was wishing all the time he could slip some of the good things under his jacket to take home to “ the old woman and the kids.” It would surely not have been extravagant to have rewarded these men with extra pay. A soldier or a man*of-wars-man, were it not for an occasional war, would become an Anachronism. As George Herbert quaintly puts it, a soldier in peace time is like a chimney in summer ; but in either case the need of service is implied—the soldiers in war time, and the chimney’s in winter. Certainly our felicitations of the successful campaigner should be accorm panied by substantial reward for hi? services, although inspired, as in this case, by Ids speedy return and comparatively trivial M s. Not that the Egyptian campaign failed to contribute its quota of wounds, disease, and death. Let all the Naval and Military Hot pitals from Malta to Netliz, be consulted for a tale which has all the flavour of the tragic and mournful and hardly a sotipgon of sweet* ness ©r romance. The ovation given to Life Guards reads like the acclaim of a pit audience at a sensational play. The good fellows had done their best, and earned a hearty hand-shaking, much eclat* and a good dinner ! Their long marches, and counter marches,—plus the heat and the flies—their confused charge at Kassassin wherein the horse sank above their fetlocks in sand, were brilliant exploits, and not unworthy Her Majesty’s Cavalry of the Guard ; and we think that they in common with the remainder of the non-commissioned officers and privates of the army, and the petty officers and seamen of the navy, throughout the whole campaign, showed themselves by their j patient endurance, and steady discipline, and the calm intrepidity they displayed in ; action, to be deserving at the hands of their ' country of some reward more substantial 1 and enduring, more creditable to the country ■ and more useful to themselves good ‘ dinner !! 1