OUR OWN WAR OFFICE AGAIN. How Not To Do It.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 79, 4 January 1902, Page 8

OUR OWN WAR OFFICE AGAIN. How Not To Do It.

THE Defence Department haa been at it again. It seems to be for ever devising means by winch it can do its allotted task with more men and a more complicated system than heretofore We are led into this strain by a wail that comes from Sandon touching the latest fad of the department. The Sandon-Ohakea Rifle Club was compelled by the department to send its deposit for rifles by postal note. This cost 5s A cheque would have cost Is, but the War Office would have none of such modern methods. * # • One would almost reason that the Defence Department has no banking account, or, perhaps, no officer who has been trained to present cheques' for payment Perhaps, an appointment as cheque carrier to the department should be made at once There are quite a number of men eminently fitted for the billet, and who have sufficient rank to entitle them to the honour * • • Well, the rifle club sent the postal note 9 as commanded That is the last they have heard of them. Probably there is no acknowledgment clerk, and as the matter is outside the province of every other person in the department, they must await the appointment of a duly qualified person, who may be up the country, or who has not established his relationship with the great ones of the office yet, or something of the kind * • • It has been suggested that the drones of our New Zealand War Office might do the State a service by volunteering for service with the Eighth Contingent at the seat of war, and leave iihe workers to sort out the department in their absence. There will be more room, and probably said drones would be a good deal more useful behind a rock than behind a desk, where it is beneath their dignity to do anything in an oichnary businesslike way. The department is being brought into disrepute by being over-crowd-ed The work done in it recently has been very heavy, but only for a few men The others, apparently, are falling over their inferiors, and are hindering the work When the la-st of the drones has departed for the front, and the workers have thrown out the antiquated rules that are now in use, they should sport an up-to-date shingle on the oak of that august department with "For Business Only" as a motto-