DEFENCE CONTROL.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 126, 28 May 1919, Page 5

DEFENCE CONTROL.

HEADQUARTERS CHANGES. COMMISSION'S SUGGESTION ** ADOPTED. (Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. Recent changes at Defence Headquarters show that the Minister of Defence has adopted one of the most imrportant recommendations of the Defence Expenditure Commission' of last year. General Richardson has taken over frdm the General Officer Commanding (General Sir Alfred Robin) the position of Quartermaster-General, and has also undertaken the duties of AdjutantGeneral, formerly carried out by Colonel Tait, now relieving the Samoan Administrator. The adjutant-general is the nearest approach in military organisation jto an officer in charge of administration, and it was a foregone conclusion that this office would be abolished when General Richardson took complete charge of the administrative side of defence matters. The General Officer Commanding has important duties left to him, but he will now be relieved of much work, and will be able to attend more to the effective carrying out of the country's defence policy. The separation of the G.O.C.'s duties from the purely administrative side was strongly urged by the Defence Commission, which stated: "The time has now come for a clear division of those duties. The administrative department is only a portion of the army machine, and the General Officer Comimanding should therefore be the ultijmate court of appeal in cases of dispute. jßut because the General Officer Commanding, as Quartermaster-General, has to deal with arministrative matters it is natural enough that the officers charged with the training branches, which should have been kept separate and distinct from administration, should have got into,the habit of participating in matters quite outside their true functions, and thus the two sides of military procedure have become mixed." No doubt the Commission's view of the new administrative office will be followed, and General Richardson given control of the equipment and ordnance j stores, financial services, movements and j quartering, supplies and transport, construction and maintenance and veterinary services. As for the duties of I General Officer Commanding, the Commission's advice, which the Minister is evidently adopting, is thus expressed: |"The General Officer Commanding should really be what is known in a private 'concern as general manager—supervising jthe whole, doing as little as possible of j detailed work himself, but seeing that the work of the Department is carried ,on economically and efficiently. . . It lis clear to us that the combined duties of General Officer Commanding and Quartermaster-General could not have been performed had the' work been entrusted to a less practical man than the General Officer Commanding, and had he not had the energy and sustaining power of such a man as the present Minister of Defence behind him the whole admini- , strative system would have been, in our i opinion, in serious jeopardy, instead of , having achieved, as it has done, a laro-e . measure of success."