AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

Waikato Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 645, 9 May 1900, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN ITEMS.

(Received May 9, 9.55 a.m). Melbourne, May 9. Lieut. Dowling pays a high tribute to the treatment afforded him by the Boers, wham he regarded in the main as honorable foemen. The Post Office officials request us to state that the ordinary rale of postage viz , 2|d is charged upon all letters to and from members of the Now Zealand Contingents iu South Africa. They do not go at a reduced rate as “ soldier letters.” Trooper Smythe, of Cape Colony, was recently intercepted and disarmed by the Boers at Donkerspont. He was then told to go, bat as he moved off the enemy tired arid shot him iu the head, shoulder, and leg. He immediately dropped aud feigned to be dead, when the Boers, after kicking bis prostrate body, left him. Ultimately be was rescued and taken to Mafeking. The Daily Chronicle says The war correspondent nowadays is severely handicapped by the censorship, but this is not Che only difficulty with which he has to contend. iVe have been sometimes puzzled at the curious delays to which some of our despatches from the front have been subjected. A letter we have just received from a correspondent who was lately with General Buffer in Natal suggests that the censorship was not always to.blame for this. It appears that on more than one occasion before the messages passed by the censor at the front had arrived in England war news was put upon the cables from points far from the actual scene of the fighting, and found its way to London hours or days iu advance of the messages sent from the field. Many of the correspondents are convinced that there was a leakage on the wire, and that our own news was used as material by those who could thus tap the telegraph. We are glad to hear that an inquiry is being held into these suspected abuses. There was some trouble of the same kind in Egypt iu the Soudan campaign of 189G, when a V.leakage " in the telegraph office hundreds of miles from the front enable! an unscrupulous operator to collect and forward news gathered by the specials from south of Wady Haifa. But there is a suspicion that iu Africa not only has the news been annexed by some unauthorised person, hut that means have been found to give additional value to the material thus obtained by, delaying the oriurinal messages from which it was COl* looted.