Topics of The Times

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26242, 28 August 1946, Page 4

Topics of The Times

by Hydra,

Gradually, but only very gradually at that, the British Army is getting rid of some of its survivals of the days when it was composed of an educated “ gentleman ” officer class ruling over a great mass of lower orders whose duty was not to reason why, but to do or die, and then only when specifically instructed. The cables record: The G.0.C., Northern Command, General Christison, has abolished pay, leave, and sick parades. . . . Soldiers in future will have their pay handed to them instead of lining'up and saluting an officer before and after getting the money. Army doctors are adopting surgery hours and letting officers and rankers make their own appointments. It is apparently being realised at last, although it has taken the most terrible war in history to do it, that just because men are soldiers they need not necessarily be deprived of every vestige of human dignity on all possible • occasions. With the exception of the inevitable few who are to be found in every gathering or community, men will respond if treated as intelligent persons, and the old army idea, which still, exists in some quarters, that soldiers must be regarded as somewhat stupid children, cannot be abolished too quickly.

Men With memories of early morning, sick parades, particularly at some of the camps in New Zealand, will appreciate what it would mean to make an appointment.with the M.O. instead of having to drag yourself out of bed, say at 6.30 on a raw Trentham morning, to attend sick parade and. after waiting for an hour 0r,.50, and possibly missing breakfast, to have the complaint diagnosed as something for which you should have gone to hospital the day before- rhtm tneie were the pay parades, in which there was always one fellow trying to boiiow a cap because he had lost his and couldn’t salute for his pay oaF e * headed. And the leave parades, which were so full of obsolete military rot that they almost discouraged men from going on leave. ’ And there were of course, the meal and church parades, bailed on the curious system that, although the army could not make you eat or worship if you did not want to, it could make you go to the place where the food-for the body or the soul, as the case might available.

The questions of saluting and the general relationship between officers and other.ranks are also subjects that will require a review next time a civilian army is raised in New Zealand. By tacit agreement there was considerable relaxation in this respect in the recent war, but if we are ever to be mobilised in large numbers again there will need to be official recognition of the fact that artificial barriers canflot suddenly be introduced among people who are predominantly of one class and be expected to produce good results. There are already signs of progress in this direction, and they are to be welcomed.

We recall hearing a story, which may or max~ not be true, of two Indian soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Germans in Italy. A day or two later they escaped, but could not find their way to the Allied lines, and in the meantime, until they were eventually picked up by an advancing British unit ha<f travelled almost across Italy and back. When rescued they were found to be on the point of starvation, so that a medical orderly who was attending to them was more than surprised to find- that one of the Indians had a full tin of emergency, ration in his pocket. “ Why didn’t you eat this’ ” he asked. The Indian, a literal minded fellow, it seems, simply pointed to an inscription on-the tin —“Not to be opened except with the permission of an officer! "