BACK FROM THE WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 127, 30 May 1901, Page 2

BACK FROM THE WAR.

(To the Editor.) Sir. —What a home-coming , for our dear boys last Sunday by the s.s. Elingamitc! They might have been Austrians judging , by the warmth of their reception. Your report of their arrival reads: "They had to travel steerage .on the way across, end asa number of the men were invalided the trip was rather a trying one." And this treatment at an Australian port, too, with a direct cable service to this colony. Did you ever hear of such inexcusable barbarity to wellborn and brought-up men, who have risked thefr all for the Empire's good? What was all the froth and effusive talk worth when they startjed for South Africa? The friendly i welcome and substantial aid is most needed on getting home again—, ■wrecked in body and means. If those lin authority could read the letters I received from "our boys at the front," and what they have to go through, it would surely ensure pro- | vision being made for at least a sa? J loon passage from Australia. And yet iwe have thousands of poimds to 'squander on the occasion of a Koyal visit with such a struggle in full swing ,in South Africa, with our boys dying by the score from privation, want and exposure (so-called enteric Tever), trying to sleep in the open in soaking wet uniforms, which" have not been taken off for a week at a time. —I am, etc., ■ GEATITUDE.