GENERAL MERCIER AGAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 65, 17 March 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

GENERAL MERCIER AGAIN.

WE DIDN'T ILLUMINATE

(From Our London Correspondent.)

LONDON, February 2.

The election of General Mercier,, who cut such a pitiable figure in the Dreyfus affair, to the French Senate has caused the "Figaro" to remind France of his exploits in the Madagascar Exhibition. General Mercier, it will be remembered, was Minister of War what time France thought fit to take to herself the country of the Malagasys. His. management of that little war was cruelly summed up at its conclusion in the remark, "Sixty-five millions of francs, STGS corpses." General Mercier invented the 200 th Regiment, consisting of young soldiers without any foreign experience, and who made these ■wretched boys drag 0040 heavy, cumbrous, and ■ expensive iron carts across Madagascar, by way of transport. In April, 1595, the marshy, fever-stricken shore at Majung&. was covered with provisions, equipment, and goods of all sorts in the most terrible-disorder, while the soldiers had nothing, and were forced to sleep on the ground, with the result that they got fever. Happily for them the Malagasys were far away, or not a man would have been left to tell the tale. But as it was, by the middle of July over 3000 men were in the hospital, and the doctors were very scantily provided with the necessary medicines, the greater part of the stores having been left by the wayside for lack of transport. By the middle of August the iron carts, though dragged by GO men each, could be taken no further, and in consequence the troops' main sustenance was mouldy biscuits. Suicides were frequent, and the soldiers died by dozens of fever by the roadside. France iost 35 officers, over a thousand men of the 200 th Regiment. 148 naval gunners, and others to the number of 575 G. Yet no one in London illuminated in celebration of the French disasters, nor did our papers rush out "specials"- to bring joy to the lreart of the Londoner by chronicling the results of the ghastly blundering of the supposedly splendid French military system.