NOT WELL MANAGED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 11, 13 July 1943, Page 4

NOT WELL MANAGED

There will probably be many excuses offered for the reception arrangements for the men who arrived on furlough yesterday, but they do not excuse. Hundreds of relatives and friends had

to wait in wet and rain in the streets hoping to make chance contact with the tti&a they had come to meet. Soldiers were left to their own devices, to carry their kit and get home as best they could. One letter of complaint that we print today is typical of what could be heard from the lips of hundreds of the public yesterday. It was a wet day, secrecy had to be maintained in making" the arrangements, accommodation convenient to the wharves where men and relatives could meet under cover is hard to find—these are some of the excuses that may be given. But the time of arrival was^ known to the authorities well beforehand, and if even at the last moment a call had been made for extra transport it should have been easily obtained. For a Liberty Loan procession there can be hundreds of vehicles, the Government itself has in the Army and in its transport services all the transport that could be needed. Something better could, and should, have been done. Then as to the absence of a parade: we feel that a great mistake was made. It would not have been necessary to inarch ail tke

men through the streets. They have been fighting and doubtless would not glory in ceremonial; but a representative parade of even a few hundred would have allowed the public to voice the pride and gratitude that they feel. It is a grand tiling to hays the men home; the men themselves and their relatives, for this reason, are ready to make light of transport and reception muddles. But the show was not creditable; it was chilly, and it certainly failed in every respect to express the feeling of the people on a day for which they have waited over three years.