Army Veterans

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2, 11 January 1906, Page 1

Army Veterans

Far off in our gosling days we knew a veteran who brought back from the Crimea and' the Indian Mutiny a limp, a blind eye, and tuppence a day— or thereabouts. He seems, however, to have fared better, in the matter of pension, than the aged warrior of the Crimea who ' passed, in his checks ' last week in Southland. And his position was even more enviable than that of the hundred and forty hungry ex-fighters of the late South African war who recently, in* a single day, in London, besought work or bread from the National Association for the Employment of Soldiers. The army authorities will do nothing for these military unfortunates beyond the bestowal of some cheap advice to seek that grave of decent poverty, the ' work'us.' But 'twas ever thus: An old Irish ballad tells the fate oKmany a gallant ■ fighter that helped to carry the flag of Empire round the world*:— €At the side of the road, near the bridge of Drumcondra, •Was Murrough O'Monaghan stationed to beg ; He brought from- the war; as his share of ±he plunder, .A crack on the crown and the loss o| a leg.' The man in ' the thin red line ' is feted and huzzaed (^rhen there's trouble in the air, and a straight-seeing > eye and a hard-hitting right arm are needed. But in the piping times of peace he is to the Bri-tish bourgeoisie what the negro is to the . good American— a • fix'd statue on the pedestal of Scorn? -Well, this is one way of '-popularising ' the army.