PITHY POINTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXV, Issue 255, 26 November 1903, Page 4

PITHY POINTS.

OF »HE ARMY COMMISSION IJEPORT. Thero were some notable expressions of opinion in the evidence given before the Commission of Inquiry into the Conduct of the War. A selection may possess much interest and provide food for thought. Thpse (says the Daily Mail) are'the ipsissima verba of the witnesses :

" You cannot have a perfect army."—Mr Brodrick. " What kills officers on service is responsibility."—Lord Roberts. "I could get no money for the purchase of clothing, equipment, transport, or my military stores, end without money, of course, I could do nothing in the way of preparing stores for the mobilisation of an army for field service."—Lord Wolseley.

'' After eight months' application—supplication, I may say—to the War Office, I have got it changed."—Sir Evelyn Wood. "On one special occasion I was furious at the idea of officers going home before the war was over on private affairs and for political purposes and that sort of thing. I forbade them, I refused them leave : tut then they went to Lord Roberts, and if they had any family interest tliey got their leave."—General Brabazon. ,y As a soldier, it seemed to me to be madness to go on as we were from week to week, not making preparations for an eventuality which to me seemed a certainty."—Lord ■yVolseley. " No one .who studies the inception of the late war can fail to see how seriously the situation was affected by the want of some sort of intellectual equipment for the Secretary of State."—Sir Red-vers Duller. " When we did away with our swords and lances the Boers began riding home." —Lord Chesham. " Our sword is an infamous sword. . . . it is not worth twopence ; our swords are as blunt as the edge of this table.''.—General Brabazon. " The shrewdest men I have ever had to deal with are the colonials ; anything they do not know is not worth knowing. They were quite the Boers' equal in everything but courage, in which quality they excelled him greatly."—Lord Methuen. "I do not care twopence about the height of ft recruit."—Major-Gen-eral Borrett, I.G. of Recruiting. " Suppose the volunteers were sudr denly called upon on an emergency, there would be a terrible lack of eqjuipment."—Colonel Howard Vincent.

" Against European forces the second lot of Yeomanry that went to South Africa would have been not only useless, but a source of danger."—Lord Tulli'bardine.

" There is np officer in the army Snows anything about the art of scouting and attacking except Bad-en-Powell, who has written a book, and I do not know that he knows anything himself."—General Sir C. Knox.

" The only officers in the army who I receive a fair military education are engineers and artillerymen. I roan infantry officer, that any boy who gard it as a personal affront, being an infantry officer, that any 'b'oy who passes through Royal Military 'Academy, Woolwich, is my acknowledged superior ; 'yet such things be.' " General Hunter.

"I have seen some staff officers who had really a difficulty in explaining a map, and others again, and I think those are fewer, could take up a map and explain it intelligently."—Lord Roberts. " The nurses are splendid, self-sac-rificing women."—Sir A. Conan Doyle. " Some of the 'first dressings' were utterly unworthy of England."— Prof. A. Ogston. "In my opinion, if the sanitary regulations had (l|een attended 1o properly, three-fourths or four-fifths of our losses .from typhoid fever would haye been avoided.''—Sir Charles Warren, " The only complaint I ever had to make outside my regiment, with one exception, was the thieving of men's kits in hospital. Tn hardly any case, excepting from Rustenlwirgi Hospital, do I remember a dead man's effects being returned to the regiment Intact," —Lord Tullibhrdine.

" The only map I could got of any value at all (in Natal) was the school map off the walls of the schools in the villages that we passed through."—Colonel Thorneyi.Toft. "If Ladysmith had fallen I relieve all the Dutch in Cape Colony would have risen—the Zulus and everybody else. They would lmve plumped then for the Boers as Iheir futuro masters."—Lieut.-General Sir A. Hunter. " The Boers nevei' made any serious attack on Klnfbjerley. Of course, they got our daily paper every day, we knew that ; it went out at night, and 1 used to publish in it information about tniines, and cautioning the inhabitants in different parts as to their dangjer, and things like that. All kinds of ruses to deceive them went out in the paper."—Major-Gen-eral Kekewich.