THE TRAIL OF THE WAR AND THE PRICE OF GLORY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20331, 14 June 1934, Page 8

THE TRAIL OF THE WAR AND THE PRICE OF GLORY.

To-day’s Special Article

Plight of Army and Naval Officers: Tragedies of Flooded Labour Market.

The trail of the war still lies heavy on England. You could < officer a small army and a navy and a considerable merchant marine with men who have sailed our ships under the White and Red Ensigns or commanded forces on land, and who are now laid up — mam' of them as effectively as the ships derelict in our coastal rivers, says a writer in the London “News-Chronicle.” The figures are: four thousand Army officers, six hundred naval officers, three thousand officers of merchant vessels—all seeking a job. Merchant ships’ officers are working as farm labourers, scullions in restaurants, door-to-door hawkers, potmen, bus conductors, taxi drivers, policemen. One who was a lieutenant in mine sweepers is a waiter in a Poor Law institution, working for nothing but his keep; a D.S.C. is addressing envelopes.

rpHE OFFICERS’ (Merchant Navy) Federation put the number doing these “ragtime” jobs (as they term them) at 1000. Some earn no more than £1 to 30s a week. Fully 500 young men with their third officer’s certificates have never yet succeeded in going to sea except as .seamen. Given the opportunity, you could ship hundreds of officers as A.B.’s to-morrow. It isn’t easy to ship as an A.B. on the vessel you are qualified to command. The Seamen’s Union are reasonable about it, but their own men are “ on the stones.” If you observe men closely in Leadenhall Street, East London, you will notice some, with eyes creased through looking over the sea, wandering about in scrupulously brushed, well-worn raincoats and rather shapeless soft hats or caps. They will probably be going to their Federation offices to see if anything has shown up on the horizon. I talked with several. They don’t complain about much, but they are rather grim and quiet. Some Tragic Stories. There was a first mate who has been unemployed four years owing to his shipping company going bankrupt; he has worked as a farm labourer and in a candle factory, and has now saved enough to keep him in London for four months while he tries to find another ship. The next was a Scottish chief officer, 1 whose last job was rum-running off Finland, where the boat sprang a leak and sank; since then he has done tw T o spells as A.B. A third was 57, over 6ft, with a chin like the prow of a ship, who did twenty-five years with his last company, but has since achieved only five weeks’ work in three years. A commander R.N.R., of 47, is living on savings—now down to £4 10s. This page could be filled with stories of that sort. Officers have been taken from the Embank- j ment, and the sale by men of their furniture and insurance policies is commonplace. ... I You remember the song beginning “The sea is England’s glory”? It has an ironical sound in Leadenhall Street. Apart from , the ship’s master, officers are “ casual labour” taken on for the voyage; there are | ships sailing under the British flag betvveen foreign ports without a single British officer on board, there are companies employing apprentices—officers of the future j —as nothing more than cheap labour. j There are 1000 officers queueing up for the dole—and many entitled to do it who won’t so far “ degrade ” themselves; there are ships’ masters drawing Poor Law relief; and there are hundreds tightening their belts in silence and cursing the day they ever trod a bridge. “ Axed ” Naval Officers. Turn to the “ axed ” naval officers, coming on to the labour market at the rate of 100 to 200 a year—mostly men of 35 to .43 ' years of age and drawing pensions of £2OO to £SOO a year. Compared with the Red . Ensign men, they are rich. But lieutenants retired at 35 with a wife and child or two to keep on £2OO have a right to expect something better of England than this. The Admiralty Appointments Board cannet possibly keep pace with them—numbers on the books have doubled since 1931

—and those who find work at all are frequently doing jobs pcor in pay and “ social standing.” Naval officers are acting as bathing-pool managers, club secretaries, are selling insurance and bakers’ sundries and fashion plates, or taking well-to-do ne’er-do-wells on trips round the world.

Others more fortunate are masters in schools who have begun farming or have secured posts in the City. Appointments in the Dominions are shrinking—those under the Colonial Office, for example, from hundreds to a handful a year. Men in Kenya, Nigeria and elsewhere are indeed writing to the Admiralty Appointments Board asking if there is any prospect at home; their jobs are vanishing. Distress Widespread.

Regular Army officers arc usually retired at a. later age—4B or so. Their posi--lion is no happier than that of men of the White Ensign. The enormous crowd of temporary war officers who are out of work —3OOO to 4000 of them —is infinitely \forse. Poverty and distress is widespread. Over 17.000 ex-officers were helped financially last year. Four hundred officers have just been dismissed from travel agencies; 1000 officers are being “ axed ” from the Indian Army. General Sir Sydney Crookshank, general secretary of the Officers’ Association, said to me;* “We can find jobs for officers’ children but not for officers.” The truth is—and it is a monstrous and alx>minable truth—that the men who served England in the war are now commonly reckoned too old to be worthy of employment. The war generation is 40 and over; there is no honour in iron-grey hair. Perhaps one may make a reference here to the exploitation of the middle-class unemployed—and ex-officers in particular—by fiims who employ them as “ travellers on commission.” Hundreds of officers have tried the job and abandoned it in despair, but thousands are still attempting to win a livelihood in that way. Men are degraded, housewives are harassed. The National Union of Commercial Travellers suggests, as a remedy, that every commercial traveller should be required to have an Inland Revenue license costing £lO or £2O. Heartless Exploitation. Mr C. J. Kebbell, the secretary, said to me: “ After all, the hawker pays 5s for his license and the pedlar £2, but men who try to sell expensive household appliapees from door to door pay nothing. Many of the firms employ men on the basis ‘ Heads I win. tails you lose.’ They wouldn’t dare to ask a man to buy his own railway ticket to Manchester, but they expect him to go in his motor-car. lie virtually gives them his car and provides the firm with a reserve fund ” The commercial traveller’s pay is from nothing upwards, and since everybody can attempt to sell, the middle-class man turns to •ommercial travelling as the poor man turns to peddling studs and bootlaces. Travelling on commission only has grown tremendously in the past five years. In South Africa, Australia and in European countries complaints are being made “ about it.”

It is largely the trail of the war; too many middle-class men pitiably ready to snatch at the faintest hope of a job.