BRITISH WAR OFFICE INJUSTICE.

Evening Post, Volume XLIV, Issue 2, 2 July 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

BRITISH WAR OFFICE INJUSTICE.

Some months ago attention was called to one of the worst cases of injustice that ever occurred even in the British War Office. In 1875 a young Burgeon named Briggs, just 21 years of age, entered the army. Two years later he was in India, arid served in Afghanistan. He afterwards was with the Nile expedition in 1884, taking part in the famous desert march for the relief of Gordon. On his return he was promoted to be Surgeon-Major for brilliant services in the field, being put over the heads of forty surgeons. Later on he was sent to India the second time, on the staff of the Governor of Madras, Lord Oonemara, who had just been raised to the peerage. For two and a half years Surgeon Briggs was with Conemara, when the latter?s wife, who waß the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Dalhousie, began proceedings for divorce. Conemara filed a counter suit, implicating Briggs, who immediately came to England to fight the case. That there was no foundation for Conemara's accusation was clear from the fact that Briggs insisted on and obtained a written apology from Conemara, notwithstanding which the charges were repeated. In order to be there when the trial came up Briggs asked for leave of absence. Instead of that he was appointed to a far-off Irish station, with instructions that no leave would be given. The only course to pursue when the trial was at hand was to place his commission in the Director-General's 'hands. . Before the Duke of Cambridge would permit him to come up to London, and before the trial came up, he was peremptorily ordered back to India. The Duke of Cambridge was inexorable. Briggs was obliged to resign, although in three years more he would have been entitled to retire on a pension of £1 a day. When the trial was over and Conemara had lost his case Briggs asked for reinstatement. Mr. Lock wood, M.P. took up the case, and His Royal Highness reinstated the surgeon, but without any allowance for the year's loss of pay and for the loss of a! year's time toward retirement and pension. Besides this, thirty-five officers had been put over his head. Thus he was deprived of all the advantages gained by his bravery in the Soudan. No man. of any selfrespect could stand this. So for the Second time Briggs was driven out of the army. Most of the London newspapers were afraid to criticise the Duke of Cambridge, and when Parliament opened Briggs, with a' bulldog look, began to haunt the corridors of the House of Commons. . His case looked perfectly hopeless until the question was finally raised in the House, when Mr. Stanhope confessed that he was unaware of the facts of the case, and said: — " Briggs shall not suffer loss as regards position or promotion in consequence of an act which any gentleman was bound to perform. Briggs, however, will be restored to the seniority held before retirement." Now, the newspapers which previously were afraid to attack the Duke of Cambridge are coming out with vehement outbursts of indignation and loudly call on the old man to retire. — Chicago Tribune.