A QUEENSLAND OFFICER ON THE WAR.

Evening Post, Volume LXI, Issue 140, 15 June 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

A QUEENSLAND OFFICER ON THE WAR.

* Another Queenslauddr now in England Captain H. B. P. Durham, is the latest colonial officer to comment unfavourably on the attitude of the average British officer towards the volunteer forces from overseas. There is, says the Brisbane Observer, no animus, however, in his remarks. He admires the British officers and soldiers, but says that neither understands the spirit of the rank and file of the colonial forces. Among the Imperial Bushmen there were old boys from Eton and other English public schools, and native-born Australians, who had left good positions to rally to the call to arms. Such men, while perfectly amenable "to discipline, «had naturally, Captain Durham remarks, an independence of manner in addressing their officers quite different from that of the regular soldiers. There was nothing offensive in this manner, but ho hints that what some of the British officers expected was servility. And they did not get it. He thinks that when next colonial forces are on active service in a British war, they should be kept as a distinct force, apart from the regulars, [ and commanded only by officers who I have had experience of colonial military systems. Captain Durham was much | struck with the prodigal waste of horses in the war, and he declares that muoh of it might have been prevented. He blames the cast-iron regulations of the Army, which prevented the employment of pack*horses, Buch as proved so useful to the Boers. The British horses were continuously overworked, starved, and ove"rladen. His own contingent (the 4th Queensland) brought good horses, but lost practically the whoLe of them, as the result of these conditions, in about six weeks after landing at Capetown