The Press FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1947. Montgomery’s Visit

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25091, 24 January 1947, Page 6

The Press FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1947. Montgomery’s Visit

All New Zealanders, but especially those who served in the Middle East, will be delighted to learn of the forthcoming visit to New Zealand of Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery. The announcement of the Prime Minister that Field-Marshal Montgomery will spend two weeks in New Zealand is also welcome. Two weeks may seem a short time in which “to see as much of the “country as possible” and to discuss defence questions with the Government and the service chiefs

f staff; but it is a more generous period than most important men in Empire affairs have been able to devote to the Dominion during world tours, and it should permit visits to all the main centres.

It is doubtful whether any former head of the British and Empire defence organisation has shown the thoroughness of Field-Marshal Montgomery in his determination to study strategic problems on the spot. Since his appointment as Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the beginning of last year he has visited Egypt, Palestine, Greece, India, Canada, and the United States; and he has recently paid a social” visit to Russia which may yet have more far-reaching effects in promoting understanding between Russia and Britain than would seem likely from the ostensible purpose of the visit. This year he plans to visit the Middle East a third time, India again, Malaya, South, East, and West Africa, and Australia and New Zealand.

This is the Montgomery of the legend—the man who must see things for himself, who must get at close grips with his problem, and who must meet and talk to as many of his subordinates as his time and his boundless energy permit. Thoroughness has always been one of his outstanding characteristics and was one of the secrets of his success as a battle commander. It is hard to believe that he would be content with anything falling below his own high standards of sufficiency and efficiency; and for this reason he appeals to all British people as an ideal man for the supremely important post he now holds. As time goes by it will be harder and still harder for politicians and for governments to maintain British military strength at the level demanded by a world at “uneasy peace”. The defence services, industry, and reconstruction programmes are competing for the all too limited resources of manpower. Some compromise is inevitable, but the man who ’revitalised the Imperial Army of the Middle East and led it from near defeat to complete victory, who suffered scarcely a check, let alone defeat, in his campaigns from Africa to Berlin, is not one to be satisfied with a risky compromise. At the El Alamein reunion of his desert comrades in London a short time ago he warned them that the British Commonwealth must still “be strong and be prepared”. Montgomery will leave on the British Army more than the imprint of an outstandingly successful general. His programme of

Army reform is a logical development of his battle-tried theory that men fight best when they are treated as human beings, not as cogs in an unthinking machine. His insistence that the order of battle should be explained to the humblest rifleman taking part in it was revolutionary. Since the end of the war he has devoted a good deal of his energies to ensuring that the common soldier’s lot is at least as comfortable as that of any other citizen. He has claimed on more than one occasion that the Army is “part of

“the social fabric of the nation”, and that its social and living standards must keep in step with those of the nation. With the abolition of so many of the petty restrictions on the soldier that once were thought necessary in the interests of discipline, it should be easier to attract the manpower needed for the Empire’s standing armies. New Zealand will have the warmest possible welcome for a great soldier. That welcome will be the warmer for the knowledge that Montgomery himself has a respect for the common soldier that amounts to veneration; and he has left no one in doubt about the special place he has in his heart for the New Zealanders of his desert army.