LIABLE TO SUDDEN DEATH.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1911, Page 20

LIABLE TO SUDDEN DEATH.

From the "Old Soldier" to the Sydney Bulletin :— "There are some morals to be drawn from the sudden death of Engineer-Lieutenant Robertson on board the destroyer Yarra, just as the boat was reaching Melbourne. The evidence of the commander and Dr. Mollison went to show that he ought never to have been put iv charge of the vessel's engines during a long voyage. Said the doctor : 'The autopsy showed that death was due to suffocation from drowning ancl to heart disease .... Owing to the marked heart disease, which might of itself have been fatal, the combination of his fall into the water with Sis unnealthy state produced his death. He was liable to sudden death at any time.' The Department of Defence should explain how it came to pass that Robertson, aged 52, was put in cnarge when he was in a state of health that rendered nim liable to sudden death. Age and health are the important considerations in choosing officers to serve on board torpedo-craft. Wha-t would happen, for instance, if the engineer-lieutenant in charge of the engines of a destroyer, in a 'rush,' in the heat of a battle, had a sudden attack of giddiness and fell ? A responsible officer with a weak heart is a perpetual danger in any executive position jin army or navy. He is liable to leave the men for /whose safety he is responsible in the lurch at the very moment when there is no one available to take up his duty. Only the other day a prominent officer of the Permanent Force died suddenly in New South Wales of heart trouble. How many more are suffering in the same way ? Then there are others whose age incapacitates them for eificient service. The great jdhiro- | pean armies (and navies, too, for that matter) have set their faces like flint : against the grey-headed sergeant or subaltern. In Germany the subaltern who cannot qualify for promot^u within a reasonable time is dispense i with and can seek service in Russia or Turkey, where he is welcomed ; while the sergeant, after 12 years' service, gets a gratuity of £40 and a civil billet. In France and Austria they give him another two years. No European army will keep an ofiicer under colonel till he is 55. But in Australia — well, what can we think after the two instances just cited ?"