SLACKERS SENT HOME

New Zealand Times, Volume XLI, Issue 9247, 14 January 1916, Page 2

SLACKERS SENT HOME

POSSIBLE SOURCE OF SLANDERS ON OFFICERS. LONDON, December 2. The comparative absence of crime in this country and the rounding-up of German and Austrian spies appear to have released a number of Scotland Yard detectives from home duty. Professor J. H. Morgan, late Home Office Commissioner with the British expeditionary force, -writing in "The Nineteenth Century." says that . G.H.Q. itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men remarkable Jpr their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark doorways. "As for the 'Society ladies' of whom one hears so much, i never saw one'or them. If they were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew anything of them. TRACING IGNOBLE SLANDERS. "During the time I was attached to it the G.H.Q. Staff had two chiefs in' succession. The first was a brilliant soldier of high intellectual gifts, now chief of the Imperial Staff at Home, who; nlthough embarrassed by indifferent health, worked at great pressure night and day. Hia successor aG.H.Q. is a man of stupendous energy, commanding ability, and great force ot character, who has risen from the ranks to the great position he now holds. Under such as these there was a&d is no room for the 'slacker'' at G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were" very few of that undesirable species at G.H.Q., and as soon as they were discovered they were sent home. "I sometimes wonder whether one could not trace these ignoble slanders to their origin in the querulous lamentations of these deported gentlemen, whence they have percolated into Parliamentary channels- But it really isn't worth while. The public has, I believe, taken the thing at its true valuation. In plain speech, it is 'all rot.'" OUR WAR GAS EXPERTS. Professor Morgan marvels at the way in which our men have adapted themselves to the ever-increasing multiplication of the apparatus .of war. Our gas pumps, ho says, are in charge of "corporals" in the chemical corps of the sappers, and each of these is, in nilio cases out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one of considerable distinction. Ho is usually a lecturer or Assißtant-Pro-fessor ia Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who has left, his testtubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting allurements of the treuches.

"Ho has three gases in his repertoire. One is -comparatively innocuous —it disables without debilitating; and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes."