CO129-253 - Public Offices & Others - 1891 — Page 630

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Martial decide between me and the Commander-in-Chief, and between me and Sir George Bowen.

I state as follows in my application to His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief for a Court Martial (Brochure 11, pp. 16–17) :

"I will leave to ablor pens than mine the task of sati- rising the whole proceedings, beginning with Sir George Bowen's treachery and ending with the last broken promise; confident that all who make themselves acquainted with the facts will pronounce them an unworthy travesty of the grand old traditions of our army-and one for which Your Royal Highness, and Your Royal Highness alone, is respon- sible. It is surely opposed to the best and trucst traditious of our army for its chief to be deterred from defending his subordinates for fear of offending a Colonial Governor's powerful sponsors in Downing Street; although you saw in the printed official letters that Sir George Bowen's friends at the Colonial Office were afraid of explanations, were afraid to have produced before any tribunal my letters about him.

My letters to the Secretary of State for the Colonies and to the Adjutant-General show the labyrinth' which the Secretary of State had made for himself, and the 'con- tradictions' in bis letters; but in both those respects the Military Secretary fared worse than the Cabinet Minister when he must have been carrying out Your Royal High- ness's orders or wishes; and Your Royal Highness, yourself, fell into a still graver error than either of the two officials above-named, as your autograph letters to me show. In one you state as a positive fact that which never occurred, and in a subsequent letter you admit this so-called fact to be groundless.

"The Court Martial and those who carefully read the correspondence will see how truly I have focussed the ease,

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and when the whole business is published I shall indeed be surprised if the chivalry on which we pride ourselves does not make itself heard in protest against Your Royal High- ness and my other enemies. I shall indeed be surprised if the voice of public opinion does not approve--and strongly approve of my doing everything in my power to obtain a Court Martial, rather than struggle any longer helplessly with you in attempting to obtain a wise and peaceful settle- ment of the controversy into which I have been driven against my will.

"In these circumstances I feel that it is now my impera- tive duty to get a Court Martial; and so resolved am I to have a public trial that I turn my long, patient, uphill defence into an attack, and cut off all retreat by using the language I do. It is Your Royal Highness that has goaded me into action by making it so very plain that I am to abandon all hope of peace with honour'; and to conclude that you have now resolved to leave me the victim of gross injustice, with an implied official disbelief in the truthful- ness of my statements.

"I say official disbelief advisedly; for Your Royal High- ness's autograph letter to me marked 'private,' and those from your friends which are also marked 'private,' do the

reverse.

"In my desire to be as clear as possible and to throw all the light I can on the whole matter, I have to go over ground that has already been well trodden; but the details I give may be useful to the Court as woll us to my lawyers, now that there must be a public trial after the failure of all my endeavours to secure an amicable settlement-but to no purpose! So deluded are the authorities with the idea that after my lifelong devotion to the Service and loyalty to my chiefs I will now tamely submit to be damned and discredited by them! Happily, however, the strongest

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