Untitled

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12592, 7 September 1906, Page 6

According to a cable War mewage published yesInderonity terday, a Dutch paper Humours. in South, Africa eaye the question of compensation for war leases must be reopened. Judging, however, 1 from the recently published report of the Commission appointed to investigate claims for compensation, the lesfc eaid about many of them tQi® better. The Commission, who spent nearly three years in a v-ery invidious and complicated task, find' "that the ordinary reliance placed) upon, testimony on oath oould not, in, the cases of many of the claimante, be givero." Aβ tho "Daily Mail" points out, Mr Kruger'e example in okiming £1,000,000 for moral and intellectual damage caused by the Jameson K-aid seems to have been followed' by some of Abe burghers. One dud aeked, not only for compensation far tihe 'loss of fowls,, but for £45 for the value of eggs which, the birds might have laid had they not been killed, and for £509 for "morel indemnification , * for the loss of the fords andi other property 1 Another claimant was induced to admit that ihe began with nothing, and ■ consequently lost nothing. Another wanted! the salary he would Have earned had be not gome on commando with tho Boer forces, and the Commission were asked to pay ten shillings a day to <a Boer during the time he was detained as a prisoner. The Coromieisoners were expected l by one claimant to pay the value of property looted! from the British and recovered when the Hooter was captured, and by another Boor to allot compensation for food consumed and clothes worn while on commando. A claimant who Tied been a telegraph clerk in, the service of the Transvaal Republio, at £27 a month, claimed £1,600 compensation, for the capitalised value of pension righte, whereas under t!he lawe of the Republio olerks had no pension rights. No low was too small to form the subject of a claim, one claimant asking for compensation for "one table knife, three pieces of bacon, six sausages, one tilt of butter, and a piece of pork," which, he had 1 missed from his house. The exaggeration by many foreign subjects was most pronounced , . A woman claimed £655 as compensation for the horses and cattle she had lost; but it was proved that her stud consisted of a wounded horse which had been looted' in Cape Ooiony by a burgher to wihom she was engaged to be married. A claim was mad© for £9000 add for damages to buildings and furniture, wißloh, however, did not belong to the peraem making the claim. A Testaurant keeper, who was deported by the military from Johannesburg for exhibiting grossly offensive pictures of British Royalty, claimed £20,000 as compensation for removal. A specimen of a piece of brown iron ore, found in a block of limestone near Oamaru, has been placed in tho "new exhibits' oaso at the Christchurch Museum.