HONOUR IS TOO EXPENSIVE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13372, 25 June 1941, Page 2

HONOUR IS TOO EXPENSIVE

ARMY OFFICERS

Must a man have a private income in order to be an officer in the British Army? Is the Army being deprived of the services of first-class men, who ought to be officers, because they cannot afford to leave the ranks?

Investigations I have made indicate that the answer to these two questions is yes, writes Henry Longhurst in the Sunday Express. An officer-to-be must have private means before he can even buy the minimum equipment required by the War Office. This is not a question of opinion but of fact. The War Office will allow him £30 —with which to purchase articles that cannot anywhere in Britain be purchased for £3O.

Application of the purchase tax to most of these items has caused a very real resentment among officers.

By buying certain items at cost price from Ordnance, say the War Office, it used to be just possible for an officer to "do" on £ 30. But even the War Office admits that he must now have private means to pay the Purchase Tax' on top of increased prices. A detailed budget shows that he will do well to spend only £ 45. Costly Replacements And he is allowed nothing for replacements. In a long war he may have to replace almost every item of his equipment three times —out of his pay. That is why so many officers think that officers' uniforms and equipment ought to be made a standard "issue." Marriage and children's allowances are a very sore point. An officer under 30 gets 3s a day for his wife, plus Is 6d a day for the first child and Is for the second. Officers over 30 get a flat rate of 6s a day, irrespective of whether they have six children or no children at all. A single officer, or even a married officer without family" (writes an Army captain), "can manage comfortably on his pay. But children put an entirely different complexion on the matter. "I have to spend four-fifths of my income on the family, and then try to do the impossible by paying mess ills and living up to a required standard on the rest. "I have cut out all beer, cigarettes and brotherly frivolity and am regarded as a kill-joy . . It is almost impossible to live within one's income if one has three children."

Why Not Free Food?

Commitments made in civilian life, such as life insurance and children's education, I was told by the War Office, may be assisted by a special war

service grant. But this is unlikely to be more than £ 2 a week at the most. There are many complaints about delays in receiving pay and allowances, making for unnecessary hardship. These, I believe, are in very many cases the fault of the officer himself.

A great number of officers are beginning to complain of the system whereby they have to pay mess subscriptions. Why, they ask, should they not be fed wholly at the Army's expense? Some suggest a scale of mess payments graduated according to rank.

Potential officers are being kept in the ranks by the fear that they could not live, without a private income, as their regimental standards require. Take the case of a sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals. His commanding officer wants him to train for a commission. He cannot accept. As a sergeant he received £ 3 Is 3d a week. He pays 2s 6d mess subscription per week. Out of the remaining £ 218 s9d he pays for toilet and cleaning materials, buys beer (m the public bar) and cigarettes (Woodbines) and goes to the cinema (in the "ninepennies"), and still saves 15s to £1 a week. A Sergeant's View "Consider," he says, "what my position would be, without private means, as an officer.. "I should be paid £3.lfs a week (credited, don't forget, monthly in arrear). One pound would go in mess subscriptions, leaving me right away with 2s a week less than I had as a sergeant—and laundry, batman and various other unavoidable subscriptions coming to another 10s a week. "If I want a drink, it muse be in the 'lounge,' my cigarettes must be at the respectable price of Is 6d for 20, and if I go to the cinema it must be in the half-crown seats. "My leave is more expensive, through keeping up an officer's standard in the same way, and I have to save all the time in order to pay for my next uniform."