Page 7 Advertisements Column 1

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 145999, 4 December 1917, Page 7

THE “OBSOLETE” SWORD. OFFICERS COMPLAIN OF USELESS PURCHASES. Officers in England are complaining of the cost of many of the little things they are forced to buy—without which no officer is complete though he could very easily do without them and never miss them. “I know war is waste, but why should the hereditary high, priests of war—those Aldershot minds who draft the Army regulations ?nd_ orders—make the ■waste worse than it is?” writes a correspondent to the Daily News. “Here at the front we never use a sword—never even seen one. But we have to buy these stupid encumbrances —and leave them at home. I know one huge factory employing (or rather wasting) a vast quantity of energy and skill in turning out ornamental weapons, which are at once wrapped up when bought, and put out of sight. All we bring to the front is the leather ‘frog,’ for carrying an instrument we haven’t got—and leather and boots so scarce. “It’s just the same with spurs. All officers above a certain rank must wear them. Even if doing only clerical work at the War Office they must put them on, when their only opportunity to use them would be on lie lift attendant.