The Press FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1943. Mr Jones Goes Overseas

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23882, 26 February 1943, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1943. Mr Jones Goes Overseas

The announcement by the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) that the Minister of Defence (the Hon. F. Jones) is on his way to visit the New Zealand troops in the Middle East will astonish New Zealanders generally. Mr Jones will visit the United States en route and it is “hoped that he will be “ able to pay a brief visit to London “ for discussions with the United “Kingdom authorities,” and take in a visit to Canada as well. It is not likely that the Prime Minister will give any fuller explanation of Mr Jones’s absence from the Dominion than that; and it might not be wise, for security reasons, for him to do so. But while it is to be borne in mind that behind the unrevealing official statement there may be sufficient reason for Mr Jones to go overseas at the present time, it should still be said at once that this reason must be of supreme importance to justify the absence of the Minister of Defence at a time when the recasting of the country’s defence and manpower policy is “ under consideration.” It may well be, of course, that the plan is completed, that all details have been worked out, and that everything is in train for the changes that are to be made in the militaryindustrial structure. But the Minister’s function is not only planning, it is also administration; and since Mr Jones has been the only Minister of Defence in the Labour Government, he is, or should be, the person in the Government most competent to see the plan fulfilled. The Government is not so fortunately placed for able administrators at the present moment that it can afford the absence of even so pedestrian a performer as the Minister of Defence, when a new and complicated scheme is being carried through. . Temporarily, the defence portfolio has been transferred *o the Prime Minister, whose departmental responsibilities are already too many and too weighty. He will be assisted, however, by Mr Osborne and Mr Hamilton. It is no disparagement of their ability to say that two assistants, suddenly called to this task, with a Minister who has more business than 'both hands can grapple, make a sum in addition and distraction which can never work out to a positive answer.