TOMMY ATKINS PROTESTS.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 63, 14 March 1919, Page 7

TOMMY ATKINS PROTESTS.

AGAINST DEMOBILISATION DELAYS. FIRST FRUITS OF INDISCIPLINE. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, January 8. "We have not won the war until we i' have got our peace terms, and the war] is no more over now than it was last j March. If we are to have our peace I terms we nii_st have an Army capable ot I' enforcing them. If we are to have ourj: indemnity we must have an Army which j i van ensure its collection. We know the: German well enough to know that he won't give us something for nothing.! All soldiers are asked to remember the' difficulties with which the Government I is faced, in view of the coming Peace Conference and it- question of indemni-, ties, coupled with the fact that the war,; is not yet over."' , This i s tne tenor of the War Office spokesman's comment on the recent very emphatic protests by our men in j khaki against what they conceive to be their unnecessary retention in the Army. Of course everybody in possession of their full scn-es recugni-es per fectly well that tlie war is not "over and done with.'' and that it is quite im- : possible for the Government to forthwith reduce our lighting forces to a prewar footing, and by a stroke of the pen return the millions o» volunteers and I conscripts to civil life in the course of a! few weeks. The prote.-ts which have been made are not merely the outcome | of ignorance of the situ.tion, but are I partly the result of misunderstanding. | to which the Army authorities and some prominent politicians have contributed! by the issue oi misleading ''orders" and I explanation-, and ill-considered pro-j misc. which led men to believe that demobilisation could be carried out to - far greater extent than the real condition of affairs abroad warranted, and much more swiftly and smoothly than there was any real grounds for believing such a va*-t task could be accom plished. Our men in khaki were undoubtedly mi-led upon both these 1 points, and moreover, they have been exasperated by what reems to them absolutely asinine methods of procedure in connection with the discharge of men whom they know to be useless to thei Army because of physical incapacity,! and who are kept "messing about doing nothing in depots at a big expense to I the country, whilst remunerative civil employment awaits them in walks ot life where their services are urgently, needed. To these irritations, it is to be I feared, is added a large amount of unnecessary di-conlfort and treatment Matcannot tie called fair. Men who have "done their bit" in the fighting line, and ' who have through wounds or debility j. caused by active service had their category reduced and would have been' among the first demobilised had they remained in a fighting branch of the service, have found themselves at the tenth hour transferred to a non-com-batant branch, such as the A>.C. or. Army Pay Corps, with the result that their day of release has been very considerably postponed, because these noncombatant or administrative branches are in a great measure "pivotal" in tin* work of demobilisation, and cannot possibly be demobilised as rapidly as t:ucombatant brunches, for they are not only indispensable to the process itselt. but many thousands of them must remain in the service to "clean up" —a very lengthy process, involving the employment of thousands of railway men. inland water transport men dock workers, mechanical transport drivers, and men engaged in the repair and other shops connected with these services. Naturally men who volunteered | to tight in the earlier days of the war, and who now find themsehes, as a re-i. suit of compulsory transference, in a ' branch of the service in which their prospects of early relea.-e are much more remote than those of conscripts in in- I fantry units, are not inclined to view the ' situation with equanimity. Nor is their temper improved by the knowledge thatj' men called up under tbe Compulsory;; Service Act, and who have done nothing i whatever to "earn their uniforms." arei being discharged by the thousand. orC that discharged munition workers who fled into munition works the moment | they smelt "compulsion," are now being paid a pound or more a week for doing nothing and enjoying absolute freedom the while, likely to make the 1914-15-16 volunteers more "sweetly reasonable' when they find themselves detained at some god-forsaken hole. I>adly housed and indifferently fed, subject to the cast-. iron regulation- of tne Army, victim*, ot any "spit and polish" fads of O.C.'b, and. in short, treated in any manner -.aye that which might .aiggest that they aro| reasonably intelligent bein-'s with anyj interests in life beyond those of _*.enj who. in times gone by joined the Army| for "any old reason" except the call ot duty. The explosions we have had during the pa-t few weeks ar-; symptomatic, without doubt, and unless prompt measures are taken to remedy the very, real grievances that exist in the Army! at Home and abroad, there will be "the, very devil to pay." At present it seems; to "the outsider'that "Tommy"' is more| or less a shuttlecock at the mercy ot i the "battledore." of sympathetic _iud-> dlers and the old school of Army "bosses."' who imagine that the Army of Id 14- IS is composed of the same elements! as that which Wellington had with him in the early days of tiie 10th Century, and that so far a B "the Service"' is con-; cerned. what wa- good enough for Billj Adams in 1815, should be quite all right; for Thomas Atkins in 1919. These out-, of-date disciplinarians are commencing to discover "the khaki's but the Army ; stamp, the man's the gowd for a' that,' 'and firmly believing that he has earned; I his place "in the sun, means to have it j even if he has to resort to methods as i i akin to open mutiny that it is hardly; !po-sible to distinguish between them.; I However mu'-h one may deplore the indiscipline exhibited by the Guards, the' A.S.C.. and other units recently, one has . to admit that their methods of making the authorities "get a move on" and in securing improvement in their treatment, in various directions have achieved swift success. It is really wondcriul ho-.v "insuperable difficulties"' alleged to stand in the way of the immediate re-! lease of thousand- of "unfit.-" and others, have wilted away during the pa-*t few days. Provided the indiscipline spreads no farther and the discipline ot . the Army is not entirely wrecked 'a • ian»cr to which no thoughtful person ' s'nitts their eyes), there can be little doubt that the recent disturbances have done quite a lot of good in many directions, including the sudden removal ol certain very ".quare pegs in round holes" at various camps and depots, the abolition of a number of time-wasting and fatiguing formalities, and irritating restrictions which possessed no virtue beyond the fa t that they were relics ot J "the good old days."