CONCERNING THE WAR.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 23 January 1901, Page 4

CONCERNING THE WAR.

Reform at the War Office.

That Lord Kitchener is at last to have a free hand is the most important decision come to at the Cabinet Council on Friday (says a Home paper of 31st December). Lord Salisbury has carried his colleagues with him in this respect, and a policy of “thorough” will be carried out in both the Transvaal and South Africa. The "War Office officia's do not like the rapid growth of Lord Kitchener to positions of influence, and they were careful to let out the news of what had been done in the Cabinet as soon as it reached them. There are, as a matter of fact, serious differences of opinion between the existing authorities at Pall Mail and the members of the Government. The War Office even made an attempt to defy the Government, and, so far as the chief officials on the military staff are concerned, the result is seen in the resolve of Lord Wolseley to leave his post of Com-mander-in-Chief this week. Lord Wolseley is sick of the whole business. He has between the upper and the nether millstone for the last five years, and the attempt of the permanent officials to put obstacles in the way of the Cabinet, who, after all, represent the country, has proved the necessary last straw. Lord Methuen will have now either to come home or serve under his junior, and the war will not last much longer once Lord Kitchener is fairly in the saddle. This is how one of “our boys” at the front puts it: —lf the Boer men are bitterly antagonistic to tho British soldiers, the Boer girls are making love to the Tommies to such good purpose that I know of at least twenty weddings to come off as soon as peace is declared.”

War Correspondents. The home-coming of the war correspondents has been the occasion of numerous junketings, and it now looks as if it would yet become the occasion for the washing of much journalistic soiled linen. So far, the principle figures in the little storm that has been raised have been Lord Roselyn, Mr Winston Churchill, M.P., and Mr A. G. Hales, who represented the Daily News at the front. It is too early yet to decide who is to come off best in the fray, but it certainly will not be Lord Roselyn anyhow, for the publication of certain statements in his book “ Twice Captured,” reflecting upon the conduct of the Household Cavalry and the 10th Hussars has already led not only to the withdrawal of that work from circulation, but to an unqualified withdrawal and apology—characterized, certainly, by candour and manliness—by its author to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales as Colonel-in-Chief of the maligned regiments, to the Colonels, and to “every officer, non-commissioned officer, and man” of tho same gallant band. Probably the entire incident is unique in the history of authorship, and it is to be hoped that it will remain so. It is well Lord Rosslyn reserved his bonne bouche for “volume form,” and he did not give it in any of his war letters, otherwise the veracity of Special Correspondence would once more have been liable to impeachment.