MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL AND "SMILER" HALES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 291, 7 December 1900, Page 5

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL AND "SMILER" HALES.

A SEVERE 11EPJIOOF.

At the dinner of the Pall Mall Club last night L\fv. Winston Churchill, M.P. (who was one of the guests of the evening with Dr. Conan Doyle), was vevy severe on Mr. "Smiler" Hales for his attacks on the British officer. He at first castigated Lord Eosslyn, whose methods of self-advertisement are a little too like his own to be altogether agreeable. He had, he said, "been reading a book called 'Twice Captured"—aii extraordinary title, for it was perfectly easy to bs captured. (Laughter.) A man might just as easily call his book 'Twice Bankrupt.' (Laughter.) There was a passage in Lord Kosslyn's book to which he felt it his duty to allude—a passage in which the behaviour of four distinguished cavalry regiments was attacked. Their 'mad flight' at Henna's Post was spoken of. Now he wished to say, as one who had been over the ground and heard the story from a dozen actors in the event, that there was not a vestige of truth for these scandalous statements. (Cheers.) It was intolerable that a person who had fallen in the mud should endeavour to veil his ignominy by splashing- mud over other persons. (Cheers.) He would not class a correspondent such as Air. Hales with Lord Rosslyn, but he must strenuously and indignantly deny certain things which Mr. Hales had said. Mr. Hales had poured out the vials of his scorn on the 'kid-gloved British officer' with his 'hee-haw manners,' his 'drawling speech,' his 'offensive, arrogance' and his 'worship of dress. These charges had since been repeated in a more serious way in an article in the 'Nineteenth Century.' He had seen rnorjp of the war in South Africa than Mr. Hales and he had seen the British officer in other wars, and he utterly denied the truth or justice .of these charges. (Cheers.) A man had a right to be judged by his peers, and let the British officer be judged by the fighting races whom he trained and led. (Cheers.) Would Butter's army, so often beaten, have fought its way into Ladysmith if the private soldiers had believed their officers to be kid-gloved effigias and duffers or arrogant fools. (Heaf, hear.) Our system of military education might be defective, but there was something that was worth preserving. Ask the troopers of the Imperial Light Horse or of the South Vfrican Light Horse what they thought of the regulav officers who fouo-ht with them. Ask the men of Brabant's Horse or Montmoreney s Scouts, ask the officers of the. Australian and Canjin»n contingents whether they were ashamed of their English brothers in arms. He knew what their answer would be. Whatever their impatience with our military system, they would say it was a foul and cruel slander to call the British officer either negligent or stupid. (Cheers.)