Colonel THORNEasked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been directed to cases where South Africans in 1914 and 1915 responded to Lord Kitchener's urgent call for recruits, and paid their own expenses from South Africa to the United Kingdom in order to serve without delay, many of them selling up businesses or sacrificing lucrative callings; whether he is aware that some of these men having applied for commissions were kept on the War Office waiting list for so long, all the while incurring expenses, that they got tired and joined as private soldiers; whether the scale of recompense, based on rank, adopted by the War Office to meet such cases is adequate; and, if not, what steps he proposes to take in the matter?
§ Mr. FORSTERArmy Order 275/1918, a copy of which I am sending to the hon. Member, contains the conditions under which and the limits within which refunds of passage money are made to those who came from abroad to join the Army, and I regret I cannot modify those conditions. It would not be practicable to make distinctions between men who joined the ranks according to the various reasons they may have had for doing so.