A RECRUITING SCANDAL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12589, 26 August 1901, Page 4

A RECRUITING SCANDAL.

We know something of the care with which, the member® of the New Zealand contingents for South Africa were selected and the strictness of the shooting, riding and 1 physical tests to which they were put, and we have every reason to believe that similar precautions were taken in Australia to guard against the inclusion of weak or incompetent men. If the volunteer regiments from the Mother Country had been raised with the same care Lord Kitchener would not now be “ complaining bitterly of the slipshod examination of recruits in England,” or attributing the delay in militxary operations to the necessity for training the Yeomanry. The Yeomanry has been a byword for incompetence from the beginning, and the butt of half the jokes of the war. It seemed to make mistakes in preference to using common-sense, it failed signally to display ordinary intelligence, and) company after company was captured, until even De Wet was said to be tired >of the sight of its uniform. There have doubtless been companies of Yeomanry which did me work required of them efficiently, but their reputation suffered because of the failure of their comrades. If a man was brainless and incompetent lie was said to be “ fit for the Yeomanry,” and there was plenty ci excuse for the gibe. We are really afraid that, after all, many of the lessons which the Boer war should teach will be left unlearnt. Britain has had too wide a margin, lias been able to commit too many mistakes without paying an adequate penalty. We began with an inefficient Intelligence Department and a War Office entangled in its own' red tape. The nation made up for those early blunders by flooding South Africa with men and guns and by demanding the appointment of the most experienced generals. The War Office was reorganised, the medical service wa® rendered efficient, and the methods of fighting were adapted, very slowly it is true, to the conditions of the country and the war. But the army went on committing stupid and almost criminal blunders, which in a more equal contest would have been absolutely fatal. , A powerful, aggressive ■ enemy, organised on modern lines, would have made it impossible for our forces to recover the positions they lost. But it was not only in South Africa that blunders were committed. The authorities at Home seem to have been accepting drafts of men without making them pass even elementary tests, and the safety of the whole army has been endangered by these raw, unfit recruits. There is no lack of strong, healthy young'men willing to serve at the front, but either through carelessness or through . deliberate intent on the part of recruiting officers the army in South Africa has been saddled with scores of tlie lame, the halt and the deaf, soldiers who apparently could not be trusted out of the hands of the nurses and the doctors. We are afraid that the scandal is due to something more than mere carelessness. Examining officers must have been influenced to allow the enrolment of ' men who could not pass the tests, and l if the recruiting has been conducted on those lines w© have at once the explanation of the Yeomanry’s ‘ lamentable failure in South Africa. If such a scandal had occurred in New Zealand we should not have rested until the offending officers had been punished, and we hope that for the credit of the Mother Country and for the safety of the army a strict enquiry will be instituted into Lord Kitchener’® complaints. The colonies have the right to speak on this matter, because the whole Empire has suffered from the criminal negligence of persons in authority.