ANOTHER ARMY SCANDAL

Evening Star, Issue 12397, 10 January 1905, Page 4

ANOTHER ARMY SCANDAL

There is a threatened scandal in connection with the disposal of British Army stores after the South African wax. It has been started in a, very peculiar fashion. A native employed on the Reunion, Estate, a sugar plantation a few miles from Durban, in Natal, was charged l with stealing 'swne tins of preserved beef from the estate, and schtenced to a fine of ten pounds, cr three months' hard labor. It was stated in, evidence that after the war the Reunion Estate bad obtained front the military authorities 250,000 cases of "condemned" tinned provisions for the mere carting away. The cases were opened and the tiiw buried in, the cane fields, that in time thej might became manure for the sugar cane, and it was soma of these tins which had been exhumed' by the natives and consumed. Further inquiries have elicited the fact that enormous quantities of so-called "condemned" food supplies wero disposed of by the military authorities after the war to other sugar companies on similar terms. Of course, the cartage of such vast quantities was ft considerable undertaking, tlie weight amounting to thousands of tons. It is said that the Reunion Company kept their furnaces going for a long time with the wood! of which the oases were made. A small army of Indian coolies was cm< ployed in "planting" the tins all over the &ugar fields, and of course* this could not be done without the natives in the neighborhood lajowing something about it. In fact, there eeema to be no doubt that number? of natives have been living on this exhumed beef for months, and the significant point is that none of them have been any the worse for it. The apparent explanation is that much, if nob all, of the. beef was and is still perfectly good, and that an enormous -amount of public store? has been wasted.