CABLEGRAMS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 11561, 14 June 1900, Page 3

CABLEGRAMS.

[PKR PBSSS ASSOCIATION. — 00PTRIOHT.] men fell victims to disease, though personally ha was was not suffering from fever, but from over-work. In one hospital he was in there was supposed to be accommodation for 500 men, and there were actually 1700. The other hospitals were equally overcrowded. They might expect men to return disabled much more rapidly in future, as the authorities would not allow those who were ill to go back to the front. He was offered three months' leave, and a passage to England, and the same offer was made to others, and had, in the two instances he knew, been accepted by New South Wnlea men. He did not think patients got the attention they should in somo of the hospitals, and said that somo members of the contingent who had been sent down before himsolf had not received attention when ho arrived. This might be because the medical staff were overworked. Nevertheless, the men who had volunteored would, he believed, do so again. Colonel Penton, replying to tho toast of the contingents, took occasion to

■ jokingly remind Ministers that it whb in . that room they had decided not to let him go to the front, which would have given him a better right to reply to such ' a toast. The Hon. J. G. Ward explained that Colonel Pole-Penton'B request was only refused because of the important work required here, work which had been admirably done by himself, Sir A. Douglas, and the department. Captain Hayhurst, in the course of a conversation, said that though the contingents were now brigaded together, yet the exigencies of the service had been such that up to the time he left they had - never met except when a few of the No. 1 Contingent had been temporarily left behind at Bloemfontein.