The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1918. AN ALLEGED SCANDAL.

Taihape Daily Times, 24 January 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1918. AN ALLEGED SCANDAL.

(With which is incorporated The Tai tiapo Pott liiid Waiciarino News).

As a settler and coloniser the average New Zcdlandcr is par excellence, as a soldier he is oftimes the most disappointing mixture in varying degree of all that is most admirable with some of the worst features of Prussian militarism. As a warrior, for bravery and honour, he earns the respect applause of the whole world, but in cases where the elements of Prussianism preponderate —never in the firing line —admirable qualities are suppressed and overridden by the most contemptible and detestable behaviour such as no Minister of Defence in the British Empire can scarcely hope to withstand. Many cases have been reported in other parts of,the Dominion that an honourable, just and generous people may well feel shame for, but we have left the newspapers in those parts to secure as near a return to commonsense as they could attain. There is nothing more distasteful to a newspaper than to perform a duty in which any particular individual is venally involved, but our turn has come; the air is so thick with rumours of the angry type, smelling of revolution, that we could no longer avoid making enquiry. We, of course, first went to the representative of the Defence Department, but the cold shoulder was too strongly in evidence, and under it was the proverbial departmental oyster, its valves of communication with the outer world closed to everything short of a hammer and chisel. The stories in the street were so lacking in cohesion and compatibility that no pieecablo fabric could be woven from them, and we had despaired of unravelling the subject of rumour when we were brought to face a gentleman recently arrived from Palmerston North. He unfolded a story that seemed to bring all the rumours into the sequence and to endow them with some measure of credibility. This story is that a recruit named Charles William Harding was passed to go into camp on the 2Sth August last, he passed the Medical Board, and continued to wait about, taking temporary employment in Taihape as the driver of a carrier ’s cart. He approached the Ser-geant-Major in charge of the local defence office, anxiously asking when he was to be called into camp. Ho was told that he was to wait until he received papers and railway ticket from the Group Commander at Palmerston North. Harding had often expressed his desire to go into camp and voiced his surprise about not being called, but he was scarcely prepared for the call when it did come. There were no papers or railway tickets about it, a defence officer stopped him on Ms cart, in the street and informed him that he was a prisoner for desertion. The protestations of the man were virtueless, he was taken off his cart and kept till the train left for Palmerston North, and he was duly delivered a prisoner for desertion in the Group y Commander’s Office. Then, so the rumour runs, he was informed that his papers had been sent to Taihape months ago, duly registered by post, but the postal authorities had returned them ..marked “Not known in Tailpipe.’ ’ A subsequent telegram uas also returned similarly marked. For days Harding was kept a prisoner and treated as a deserter and the rumour is that he has demanded to be tried by court-martial. He was snatched away from the streets of Taihape on which he has worked for the last twelve months, and has since been kept in durance, under guard of military police. He was given no opportunity to attend to pri-

vate affairs of any Rind (because stupid officials sent important papers by registered post insufficiently addressed. But, even in this, it is said, magnanimous officials laid the cause of all the degrading indignities and inconveniences the soldier has suffered to his signed a paper, bearing only the address, Taihape.” We can scarcely look upon the officer who filled in such an address as an intelligent being, and if any enquiry is held that can scarcely be successfully pleaded. We should like to know who it "was that informed Base Records that Harding was a deserter. If it was the same officials who allowed Harding to sign a paper on which his address was merely Taihape, they stand self-condemned, because in the official list of deserters published in October last his address appears in full, ‘ ‘ Charles William Harding, Coffee Palace, Taihape.” Did Base Records fake up this address; did they take the risk of substituting or amending the address sent to them by the Group Commander who presumably had the man igrrominiously arrested in the street and carried away to Palmerston? Such a thing is unbelievable; there have been discovered too hrany soldiers bearing

precisely similar names for thom to do i anything so foolish and hazardous. Harding, it is well-known, has been keen, very keen, to get into camp; he has been about the streets of Taihape from morning till night every working day of the week since he enlisted, therefore no sane person can believe that he has been justly treated, or that the reasonable minimum of effort was made to ascertain his whereabouts. Unknown to him, his name has appeared as a deserter and a warrantor his arrest has bedn hanging over him since the 17th October last, and this information has been broadcasted overall New Zealand in a special publication, of which we have a copy before us. An injury to one is an injury to the community, and we are sure that the temper now being displayed at the whole stupid proceedings by grossly incapable officials, in this town will load to a public effort, if necessary, to secure justice for the injured man. Eocompcnse he can never have for the brutal charge laid against him, published throughout the country since October last, can never be overtaken, Even though he wins a Victoria Cross, lie will. be talinted with being a deserter, and Government publications will bo produced as proof. As stated, much of this is based upon rumour, but it is rumour of such a character, said to come from Harding himself, that we cannot help regarding it as perfectly true. Much more is said that we also regard as true, but the proper place, for it being stated is at an enquiry. We sincerely hope that the people in this town who know Harding intimately and who have interested themselves in his behalf will insist upon an enquiry that will at, least wipe out the stigma of deserter.