NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16022, 14 September 1915, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

GREECE AND THE WAR. In view of the declaration of a temporary policy of silence made by M. Venizelos, Premier of Greece, and quoted in a cablegram published yesterday, special interest attaches to an article by Air. Crawford Price, which recently appeared in the British Review, and which is evidently the first of a series of articles on "The Balkans and the War." This deals wholly with Greece, and is an endeavour to upset what he regards as a general disposition in this country to look upon "M. "Venizelos as the Athenian representative of the Entente and King Constantine as the paid agent of Germany." Both men, he insists, are great patriots." Nor is the Greek General Staff animated by Germanophile sentiments, though the officers have "a profound admiration for the German Army as a fighting machine." Ho admits a widespread German intrigue —he calls it *' a scandal"—which was actively manifested as long ago as last September. Its emissaries " delivered themselves up to wholesale bribery and corruption during the recent elections, and are now endeavouring to whittle down the Venizelist majority in the Chamber by similar Teutonic methods." Mr. Price has a poor opinion of our diplomacy in the Near East, and shows very clearly the result of the Bulgarian policy of '' narrow opportunism." He remarks incidentally that " King Ferdinand's army is the worst prepared for war of all the fighting forces of Europe." He declares that Great Britain did not ask Greece to assist us in the forcing of the Dardanelles, but that M. Venizelos during his former premiership himself suggested to the King the despatch of an expeditionary corps of 40.000 men, subsequently reducing the number to 15,000. But the Military Council was against it for two reasons : (1) That 15.000 men would bo useless and would entail the subsequent despatch of such reinforcements as would expose Greece to an attack from Bulgaria; and (21 that the allies were proceeding without any effective plan of campaign. Mr. Price seems to think that this plan is now definitelv doomed.

" BETTER TO WOUND THAN KILL."

In a letter to the Army and Navy Journal, a retired army officer says that no intelligent soldier will fire a dum-dum or an explosive bullet at the enemy, for they both kill. The object of the rifleman is not to kill an enemv but to wound him. " A dead man is simply one soldier lost from his army. He is not a burden to anyone. A wounded soldier must be taken care of. Four wounded soldiers must have an ambulance with two horses and an able-bodied soldier driver. Thirty wounded soldiers must have a surgeon, a hospital steward, and ten or a dozen able-bodied soldiers to aid the doctor and wait upon and nurse the wounded men. The ambulances block the roads and delay the troops, especially the artillery and the supply waggons. When a man is hurt everyone is anxious to get him at once to a doctor. If the troops on the firing-line are not well disciplined, and a soldier is wounded, there will be three or four soldiers who are willing and anxious to carry him to the rear. For very soldier wounded the firing-line loses four soldiers, and 100 wounded means that 400 men are lost to the firing for they never rejoin their regiments until the battle is over."

WOMEN AND THE CIVIL SERVICE.

A memorial was recently addressed to the British Prime Minister by the Federation of Civil Service Women Clerks, urging the appointment of the two committees of inquiry recommended by the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, to consider the subject of the employment of women in the various departments of the Civil Service. The adjustment of unequal treatment within the service should be, they consider, an indispensable preliminary to any widespread replacement of men by women in whatever capacity. The memorialists suggest that the solution of the difficulty created by the depletion of the ranks of the Civil Service would be to transfer some of the established women clerks to other departments where a nucleus of permanent clerks is necessary for the efficient performance of the work. The memorial continues : — We feel that it is little realised that in the big accounting departments of the General Post Office alone there are between 2000 and 3000 women clerks, women of education and intelligence, the majority of whom cannot, by reason of the paucity of higher posts, rise beyond a meagre salary. When it is considered that in the Savings Bank and the Money Order Departments two largest accounting departments where women clerks are employed—the women have to serve sixteen or seventeen years ' before even reaching the line of promotion, it will be understood that women Civil Servants look to the State in an emergency of this kind to recognise their value and their ability by employing them more widely on work which in many cases 1 is being handed over to an untrained tem- I porary staff."