It is difficult to write with coolness and moderation in
regard to the treatment which the Yeomanry are receiving in the matter of their arrears of pay. If the allegations made in the Daily Telegraph of Wednesday are true, and we see no reason to doubt them, a state of things exists which is only paralleled by the administrative scandals of the Crimea. When Florence Nightingale found that though there was plenty of quinine in a fever hospital, not a grain could be issued because its guardians had not got the proper papers of authorisation, she told the sentry to break down the cupboard door with the butt end of his musket, and he obeyed her. A similar situa- tion appears to exist to-day, but unhappily there is no one ready to grapple with it in the same spirit. No one, of course, really wants to withhold their proper pay from the men, and in most cases there is little or no doubt as to whatis due,yet no one dares pay it even to starving men because the proper papers have not been received from South .Africa—often because they have been lost or destroyed.
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