ALIEN IN WAR OFFICE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11595, 13 January 1916, Page 2

ALIEN IN WAR OFFICE

THE STRANGE STORY OF MRS SAVILE.

A VERY PECULIAR BUSINESS.

[From Our Correspondent.] LONDON, December 7. Mrs Savile, wife of the rector of Beverley, in Yorkshire, h (1) The daughter of Count Hippolyt Viktor Alexander yon Bothmer, and was born in Brunswick.

(2) Her brother is Major Count Alfred von Bothmer, wlm before the war was on tho retired list of the German army.

(3) A kinsman is General Felix von Bothmer, who ■•a in command of the German army o.n tho Strypa.

These things she cannot helpff* and :t rnoy be that she has lived in England sines the tendor age of three, had an English-hern mother, has only been in Germany oiico since she was three years old, is married to a genuine Englishman, and is as true an Englishwoman as any lady in the land. But her husband's' parish in Yorkshire is a '"'prohibited area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, and for reasons which they have- not felt disposed to make public, the Beverley police authorities gave Mrs Savile a strong hint to clear out from the area over which they exercised supervision. Whether they were justified in the action they took may be open to question, end we know very well that even the police authorities can make what the schoolboy terms "awful bloomers." But the police of a district like Beverley were hardly HEely to brand tho wife of "the rector of the parish—who, by the Way, happens to ue "a connection" of the Earl of Marlborough—as an " undesirable person" unless they felt pretty sure of their grounds. Nor is it to be supposed that their fiat would have held good unless some greater authority tnan tno Chief Constable of the East Riding of Yorkshire had endorsed it. Even the wives of "connections" of earls are generally able to get considerably more consideration shown to them in times like these than people who cannot point to family links with tho blueblooded of the land.- But in this ease the rector's "connection" did not serve to keep his wife in Beverley, indeed, sue was cleared clean out of the East Riding and came to London. The public at largo knew nothing about those proceedings, and might never have heard of Mrs Savile again had not Mr Joynson Hicks, a Unionist member of Parliament, asked a question in the House of Commons. He desired to know " whether it was not undesirable that the sister of a German officer fighting against us should be employed in any capacity in our War Office."

THE REVELATION. And out of that question came a revelation that made John Bull gasp. It earn© to light that the lady whom the Chief Constable of the East Riding of Yorkshire considered an "undesirable" in his domain, had been for Borne .months employed—together with her daughter-:at the War Office, firstly in translating into English reports received from Germany regarding British prisoners who had died there, aW latterly in arranging the kits and effects of British officers killed' on the battlefield ! Can you wonder th&t people "said things" when these matters became public property? Apart from the; fact that she was not considered a desirable war-time inhabitant of the East Riding, we know nothing against Mrs, Savile. Her friends stoutly declare that the Chief Constable committed a grave injustice when he banished' the lady from Yorkshire; assert s that she is "English to the backbone," and put her removal from Beverley, and the " fuss " now being made about her employment at the War Office, down to "malevolence" on the part of a person, or persons unidentified. _ The public has certainly no evidence in its possession to controvert the statements of Mrs Savilo's friends, but the average English man and' woman is firmly of opinion that at a time like the present the people responsible-for Mrs Savilo's employment at the War Office were guilty of something more than a serious error of judgment. In the first place noperson with close kinsmen in the enemies' armies ought under any circumstances to be employed' in any capacity in tho War Office. They may be "as straight as dies "and as true as steel to England, in which case it is unfair to employ them, because if there are what are euphemistically termed "leakages," the finger of suspicion will almost inevitably point to them. But that is not the only point of contention in the case of Mrs Savile. As the wife of a rector with a living worth £6OO or £7CO a year, neither she nor her daughter should be in need of work, and we know there aro thousand's of highly educated English-women--many of them wires of men who have given their lives for the Em-pire—-who are wholly capable of doing the work which the rectors wife and daughter have beon performing, and to \vhom the salaries they have been receiving iron Id mean all the difference between existence in genteel poverty, and life in comparative comfort. With numbers of educated Englishwomen without limit available and anxious for the national work, where was the need' (quite apart from the question of desirability raised by her German origin) for engaging Mrs Savile, a lady admittedly affluent and in no need of the work site was given? Possibly the rector's "connections" may supply an auswey to tin's question. Meanwhile, it is satisfactory to know that neither Mrs Savile nor her daughter are now at the War Office. But whoever would have dreamed' that a lady deemed undesirable as a war-time resident in a Yorkshire military area would have found sanctuary in the War Office? Only iu dear old' England could such a thing happen, and even English people waxed exceeding wroth when the facts became known to them, and they are now demanding to know "how much more of this sort of thing" remains to bo discovered. A good d'eal. some people assert, and it is whispered abroad that presently there will be revelations of a much more startling character concerning employment of Germans and Austrian? in other and more important work than that upon which Mrs Savile exercised her talents.