THE HULL PACKET & EAST RIDING TIMES
Fri 25 Jun 1880

THE ARTILLERY SCANDAL

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The Fourth East York Artillery Volunteers having resolved to disband themselves on hearing of the enforced resignation of their Commanding Officer, events in connection with this all-but unanimous resolution have moved quickly ever since. A demonstration so unparalleled in the history of the Reserved Forces, and resulting in the breaking up of so fine a body of men, could not fail in the first instance to attract the attention of Parliament and the country generally.

Mr Norwood and Mr Wilson in the House of Commons elicited from the Minister of War the precise circumstances of the case as they are known to him, which, more briefly put, mean

– that so early as 1878 there were serious dissensions between the Commanding Officer and his Adjutant;

– that on that occasion the Commanding Officer and the Adjutant were requested to resign – although the resignation of the Commandant was subsequently not enforced;

– that again, in 1879, the Lieutenant-Colonel, along with three Captains, brought certain charges in respect of the administration of the Corps' finances, which charges, after a Court of Inquiry, were dismissed as "unsupported or frivolous", and the four officers – not three, as has been elsewhere stated – were forthwith ordered to resign. The three Captains complied, but the Lieutenant-Colonel held on until he could retire with his rank.

Whether in view of these repeated dissensions in the Corps, or whether from circumstances still to be brought to light, does not transpire, but the new Minister of War was of opinion that the Commanding Officer could no longer remain in possession of his command, and must retire, as the four other officers had previously been required to do.

Then came the meeting of sympathy by the Corps, when it was resolved to disband, out of a sense of the alleged injustice which had been perpetrated against the Commanding Officer. The outcome of this resolution, and the accompanying handing over of the kits, has been the order for a searching Inquiry by the War Office into all the circumstances connected with these proceedings. This investigation opens at Hull today, and, although, according to military usage, the deliberations will be private, their result will be anticipated with a lively interest everywhere.

So far, then, everything is sub judice, and nothing could be more reprehensible than the device of assuming at the outset to publicly prejudge the case. Pending the inquiry, these resignations have been returned, and, until the result of the inquiry is known, what justification can there be for publicly prejudicing the case?

The Honorary Colonel of the Corps has meantime explained, in a letter to The Times, his position in the matter. He was not aware of any contemplated disbandment, but he had himself intended to resign, and has resigned on its coming to his knowledge that the commanding officer must retire.

– "My determination to resign was arrived at months ago, and communicated unofficially to Colonel Stanley, assigning as my reason my sense of the injustice which would be inflicted if Colonel Humphrey's resignation were insisted upon. You have fallen into a misapprehension in connecting this unfortunate occurrence with Colonel Humphrey's 'feud' with his adjutant in 1878. That matter had been definitely settled, a new Adjutant appointed, Captain Pemberton Harrison, with whom Colonel Humphrey's relations have been most satisfactory.

– The difficulty that has now arisen originated in charges made by certain officers of the corps, respecting which an official inquiry took place last year [1879], and which were declared last night by Mr Childers either unsupported or frivolous. The extreme course of requiring Col Humphrey to resign after such a vindication of his conduct appeared to me wholly unaccountable, and is to the present unexplained. The inquiry promised by Mr Childers appears only to refer to the events of last Wednesday, but will not touch the main causes of dissatisfaction in the course pursued towards Colonel Humphrey.

– I fully concur with you that the course taken by the officers and men on the 16th was precipitate and ill-judged, but I attribute it entirely to a strong feeling of indignation at the supposed injustice of Colonel Stanley's treatment of Colonel Humphrey, and I cannot but think that a full investigation and reconsideration by Mr Childers of the events of the past two years would best tend to recall the members of the corps to a sense of duty."

The Honorary Colonel seems to indicate that the latest conduct of the Corps does credit, at any rate, to its heart, whether or not the disbandment was in the strictest sense a soldierly act. Even The Times itself – amazed at so wholesale a secession of volunteers – deals gently with the individual aspect of it, whilst it deplores the proceedings in a military sense.

These expressions of opinion, too, are but an echo of the feeling which now prevails in Hull. For their own sakes, the current sentiment is that the artillerymen had better not have acted so speedily and in such a mass, but we have yet to learn that in civil life their conduct is surveyed otherwise than as the spontaneous resolution of Englishmen who were under a strong sense of an injustice done to the Corps – namely, the deprivation of its Commanding Officer, who had worked it up to so high a state of efficiency.

The Hull Corporation meet specially today to contribute their quota towards public feeling in the matter. Not that we believe anything they may do today will influence the military inquiry one jot – nor is it desirable that it should – yet it is only fitting and proper that they should exercise their right to represent the sentiment of the town, and we have no doubt that any memorial they might make would be received and considered with all due respect in august quarters other than military – in the House of Commons, and by the Queen. As a military matter, it is now in the hands of the Generals who are conducting the Inquiry – and there for the present it must rest.