§ MR.EDMUND ROBERTSON (Dundee)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether certain gratuities were paid last year to the Natal Volunteers, and to the relatives of such of them as had died, which the War Office afterwards declared to have been improperly paid; whether instructions were given to the chief paymaster in Natal in September last to insist that such sums paid to the widows and orphans of deceased Volunteers should be refunded by them; whether the War Office has persevered in this demand; and who is the official responsible for the original blunder, if any, and for the demand for repayment.
§ MR. BRODRICKNo instructions were given by the War Office to the chief paymaster in Natal to recover issues of war gratuity. This officer, on his own interpretation of the regulations, which was not sustained by the Secretary of State for War, had issued the sum of £662 10s. to the Master of the Supreme Court, Pietermaritzburg, and of his own accord he recovered from that Court the sum of £417 10s. So far as is known at the War Office, no recovery was effected from any widow or orphan who had actually received the money, and the remaining unrecovered £245 has been charged against 171 Army Funds. The matter has been under my consideration and the Commander-in-Chief, South Africa, has discretion as to pay a war gratuity in the case of Colonial corps specially employed.