Influenza hits troopship

IT is a melancholy announcement that the Minister of Defence has had to make concerning the effects of an outbreak of influenza, accompanied by pneumonia and acute bronchitis, in the troopship carrying the Fortieth Reinforcements. The severity of the visitation is indicated in the record of sixtyfive deaths at sea and nine after disembarkation. It is sad that men should be cut off in the prime of life in the firing line, and the present activity on the western front in which the New Zealanders have borne their share has been reflected in casualty lists that have brought sorrow to many a home. But at least those who there made the supreme sacrifice died facing the enemy and struck an effective blow for the great cause to which they had dedicated themselves. Those members of the 40th Reinforcements who have succumbed to a serious epidemic on the troopship, where the conditions must have rendered it unusually difficult to cope with the danger, have been cut off prematurely, before ever they reached the scene of their intended usefulness . . . To think of the soldier who sets forth, in no spirit of adventure, but with calm resolve to do his duty, whatever it may demand of him, by the side of his New Zealand comrades wherever he may be needed, only to die at sea, struck down by an insidious and invisible foe, is to contemplate an event that has necessarily a peculiar sadness . . .