RECOGNITION OF SERVICE. Four Dozen Contingenters for the Coronation.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 92, 5 April 1902, Page 8

RECOGNITION OF SERVICE. Four Dozen Contingenters for the Coronation.

FORTY-SIX men of the first five South African Contingents are to be allowed to go to the Coronation. So one gathers from the official adveiti^ement muting applications. With the exception of a couple of dozen Maoris the remainder of the coips of 1 30 men i~ apparently to be recruited f'om those who have no special qualification to be regarded as samples of New Zealand's fighting foice, except that they must be large enough to attract the eye of the London multitude. * * * The trip of the Coronation Contingent may be regarded as purely and simply a holiday grant. Who are the most desen ing of that grant and the nice little purse of £20 pocket-money — the men who have borne the heat and burden of the South African day or the men who took particular pains not to get within range of the business end of a gun ? It seems quite likely that the 150 men who will go Home will be by no means representative of the colony's war material. The sending of men other than returned soldiers is simply sacrificing ability to show. With the exception of those few Maoris the whole of the Coronation corps might, with justice, be made up of men with South African service. * * * We surmise that it will be absolutely necessary to delude the British public into the belief that all our soldiers are 70 inches long, and 30 inches in circumference. If size is the only requisite 150 six-footers could be easily drafted out of the contingents, making it quite unnecessary to draw on the purely holiday soldier at all. Keturned soldiers don't know what the official estimate of their characters may be, for none of them have ever received proper discharges. The corps, as in the case of the Imperial Representative Corps which visited New Zealand, might be composed only of "good conduct" or " distinguished service " men. Perhaps, it was quite an afterthought on the part of the authorities to include contmgenters at all, for they have included them in a way that shows plainly that the man who stays at home and grows big is the man who plucks the plum. It was not absolutely necessary to ask for applications. W T hy do not the authorities warn men for the duty, and accept excuses from men who are unable to attend 9 If the remainder of the corps, other than the four dozen seasoned soldiers, can go to the Coronation, why could they not have gone to the war ? Inclusion in the corps should certainly have been made a prize for soldiers who have done something to win ifc, and not a chance for fair-weather soldiers to revel in a cheap holiday.