War Items.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 18, 12 July 1900, Page 3

War Items.

Letters from tHe New Zealand v,-[,?,Ph provide unanswerable proof that they were wanted in South Africa. Sister Ross, writing to a Danedin friend, from Bloomfontein, says :—": — " I wish that, some of the Duaedin people who said we would not be wanted could see the state the poor fellows are in for tho want of nursing. Sometimes the boyn are dying of neglect. We have accommodation for 500 patients in No. 8 hospital, and there arc 1500 in it, with twenty sisters to look after them, so you can imagine it is very little we can do for them. There is no surgical work ; it is all rnteric or dys^ntry. There are several Australians in our hospital, but no New Zealanders. . . . Sisters Monsou and Williamson have been on the sick lint ; the rest of us are keeping well and hope to remain so. It makes one careful when we hear of three sisters dying last week. All you good people in Dunedin must remember us in your prayers, for we do want to see our friends again, and not die in a foreign land." New Zealand and Australian girls who have claims upon the affections of members of colonial contingents now at the front are threatened with serious rivalry. Their boys are all right while their good luck keeps them in the van of the campaign, and in the fighting line ; but it is when

they are wounded or convalacent that the danger begins. Here is evidence on the point, being an extract from a soldier's letter, written in the Convalescent Home in Capetown : — "We're little tin gods here, especially those of u§ who have been knooked out by bullets. My wound is in the leg, and I' can't make much of it as an exhibit, but it makes me interesting all the same. Whisper! IV: had three proposals ! Soundb disgustingly vain, doesn't it v -But, 'pon my soul, it's true. Out nice little English girl put it thi;way : ' You're goin% to be ill a longtime,' she said, 'and — well — you'll want somebody to look after you. I'm — single ! ' Thai; was all. I said: 'That's veryi good of you, but I'm fixed out there in Australia.' " This sort of thing is apt to make the colonial girls uneasy, isn't, it ? i