DEFENCE MYSTERY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10063, 8 June 1910, Page 5

DEFENCE MYSTERY.

REPORTED GOVERNMENT STINGINESS. ACCUSATION AGAINST SOLDIERS. ALLEGED FOETED WATER DRINKING. IN DEFIANCE UF ORDERS. , MEN'S INDIGNANT DENIAL. j By Telegraph —Press Association. I NEW PLYMOUTH, June 7. Tin "Da'ly News," on Friday, p-iblishad articles with the refusal of Mie Defence Department to r'cognise any liability in regard to >h? claims made by local volunteers for compensation for loss of wages, expensps, and medical treatment, owing ti their having contracted typhoid fever during the manoeuvres fit Johnsonville, near Welli "firton, on the occasion of Lord Kitchener's visit. It wai clearly sl ovn as the result of enquiries nrmnnst medical men and ihose present at the. manoeuvres that the typhoid must have been contracted there, and it was alleged that the Defence Department was culpable. The matter was brought under the notice ( f Lieut -Colonel Bauchop, Officer Con man line the District, and he informed m " Dominion" reporter that "the men in had relink from fn«ted streams in the vicinity of encampment in defimii"n "f exolicit 'orders that only the 'o be drunk by the men while on m ■ loeuvres was that obtained from the camp water supply and carried ifi water-bottles. Under the circumstances the men had no claim against the Department. The rule with regard to water was published, it is alleged, in the brigade orders, and duly circulated in camp. But diligent enquiry by a "News" reporter to-rlav failed to discover a single officer in New Plymouth who was cognisant of this brigade order. Certainly no copy of it was given to the officers commanding the Taranaki Battalion. The Volunteers indignantly deny the remark that the stream was foeted. They say it was a clear running creek, with no suggestion of microbes, which the waters proved to contain.