An official report has been published upon the mortality among
the troops in Hong Kong last year, and its verdict is sufficiently clear. The troops were not cantoned, but hutted, and so they get fever and died, as in the tropics under such circumstances they always do die. The men were overcrowded, had to drink brackish water, had no recreation, and had to walk to the necessaries a quarter of a mile under a burning Bun. Consequently out of two battalions 179 died and 279 were invalided. It is utter folly, when Madrassees can do the work without dying, to send Europeans to places like Hong Kong at all, but if they must be sent let it be as Marines, who can be taken away to sea at an hour's notice, and let us have somewhere or other in the China Seas a sanitarium. under our own rule, where the men can be acclimatized.
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