WELLINGTON GARRISON OFFICERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3101, 20 August 1913, Page 26

WELLINGTON GARRISON OFFICERS.

ALLEGED CLASS CLUB.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, August 13,

Mr W. D. S. MacDonald to-day gave notice to ask the Minister of Defence whether there was any truth in a statement now being made that the Wellington Garrison Officers’ Club recently refused membership to a certain officer by “blackballing” him in defiance of an instruction from the officer commanding the district that no officer could be put up for ballot, and that the club had further defied authority ny declining to obey the direction of the general officer commanding that an old rule allowing a ballot should bo deleted, and as a result had decided to vacate the rooms provided in the drill hall and obtain rooms elsewhere with the object of forming a private officers’ club If such statements were true, did the Minister not think such conduct an attempt to create a class distinction in a purely citizen army and a breach of discipline, and as such prejudicial to the success of the defence scheme; and, further, if inquiry revealed such statements to exist in fact what action would the Minister take to bring the offenders to book?