CORRESPONDENCE.

Evening Star, Issue 11676, 7 February 1902, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

Every letter must be accompanied by the name and address of the writer, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee ot good faith. Rejected letters cannot be returned under any circumstances whatever. Correspondents are advised to keep copies of their letters, as this mle will be adhered to strictly.

THE BOER WAR. TO THE SUITOR. Sir, —I have often been surprised and a good deal disgusted in reading the letters of New Zealanders written from the seat nf war. Judging by the tone nf some of these letters, our gallant boys from New Zealand are the pick of the men in the field ; all the others—Tommies of the regular army, Canadians, Australians, volunteers from the Home Country, and so forth —are a mere circumstance; the whole of the work and the conclusion of the struggle depends entirely upon us! But I have recently been reading news and letters received by the San Francisco mail, written by individual members of the regular army —of Scottish Horse, of Yeomanry, of volunteers, of irregulars, and so forth—and, strange to say, in a whole string of letters there is not a single mention of the prowess or work of New Zealanders. That these latter have done their share I do not for a moment deny: but upon the whole I think it would he wist to take our New Zealanders’ letters “ cum grano sails." There is no doubt about it, there is a very great tendency on the part of soldiers —nye, and of newspapers, too—to magnify the. work done by the men from their own particular section nf the Empire, and in some cases to belittle the work done by men from other sections. With regard to our own men, their usefulness has been confirmed emphatically by Kitchener, Roberts, and others, and 1 cheerfully acknowledge their verdict; but, after all, when has their valor and discipline really been taxed as that nf some of the regiments of the line? It is one thing to write letters to the newspapers; it is quite another thing to make a “ frontal attack” on a. fortified position, and that is a task which our New Zealanders (wisely, as#l think, considering their discipline) have never been called on to perform. It is all very well to talk about “mutiny.” and so forth, in connection with colonial regiments; but after reading for more than half a century about soldiers and soldiering, 1 am strongly inclined to the belief that our “ mutinous colonials are the very stamp who would be found wanting when the “ pinch ” came. No one can say that our late visitor, General Hector Macdonald, does not know something about soldiering, and he evidently diagnosed our case. Anyone who studied the speeches he made in the various parts of this colony must have noted the warnings he uttered regarding discipline, and the fact that an army (whether volunteer or regular) without discipline is merely a mob, and yet we find New Zealanders in the field glorifying the action of certain portions of our contingents who cut the traces, etc., etc., because certain punishments were inflicted. 1 beg to submit that men who acted in that way were utterly ignorant of the first and most elementary principles of a soldier’s life, and the sooner they are withdrawn from active service the better for the good name of New Zealand and that of the Empire generally. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die,” is the first principle of soldiering; and soldiers who do not recognise this should stick by their mothers’ apron strings, and not disgrace their colony by threats of mutiny, as if that were a praiseworthy thing in the presence of an encm}'. Let ns hope that the contingents now being despatched wilt not be troubled either with “swelled head” —that is, a tendency to disparage everybody except themselves —or with a tendency to question the verdict of men who studied soldiering before they were born. They may depend upon it that ultimately they will only make fools of themselves if they do. But what 1 started out to say was this: that no individual colony should fancy itself over-much, because beyond its own borders, judging by the literature cf the Boer War, it will scarcely ever be heard of, ahd so much swelling of beads will be avoided. —1. am, etc., Scoto-Nkw Zealander. Februarv 7.