BRITISH ARMY IN INDIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18325, 15 February 1923, Page 7

BRITISH ARMY IN INDIA.

COUNCIL OF STATE DEBATE. HOSTILE MOTION DEFEATED. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Heed. 4.8 p.m.) DELHI, Feb. 18. The Council of State rejected by four votes a motion urging the repeal or substantial modification of the army amalgamated scheme of 1859, with a view to reducing the intolerable burden of existing military expenditure. The mover quoted civil and military opinions against the scheme, which, he said, was responsible for the present deficit of 30 crores of rupees (£30,000,000). He appealed to the Government to accept the motion, and thereby free itself of the shackles of the War Office, to whose dictation it was bound hand and foot. General Lord Rawlinson, commander-in-chief of the army in India, made a spirited reply. He pointed out that if the Government were to maintain a separate British force of its own for special continuous service in India, it would be much more costly and far less efficient than employing as at present regular British regiments on the same rates of pay as they received in the United Kingdom. He added that the question affected a fifth of the human race. He would be failing in his duty if he accepted a standard of efficiency lower than that which the great war proved necessary, and at which the Government of India rightly aimed. Financially it was unjustifiable to institute machinery to enter into direct competition with the British recruiting establishment in order to obtain in the open market the man-power required by India. It was true that the Government of India was paying British soldiers at the rates fixed by the Home Government, but it was a matter of business, not of surrender to the alleged arbitrary dictation of the War Office.