THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7930, 2 January 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1906.

There is cause for general satisfaction in the cablegram published in our last issue to the effect that the War Office are instituting criminal proceedings against certain individuals concerned in the "war stores scandal." Every nation, apparently, has its war scandal, but this particular one is as grotesque as any ever reported. Although Mr Norman, M.P., styled it "a story of inefficiency and great waste," it is less this than

"a story of human nature indifferently supervised." For purposes of jostioe and administration all human uature is the same, not corrupt, but corruptible, and hence wbeie society is tiuancialy involved care should be taken to protect both it and its servants by makiDg the sys» tem of check as perfect as possible. The Butler Commission is the result of the sale of ourplusea in South Africa after the wax-. There was bad buying it seems, as these surpluses were extraordinarily large and it became necessary to appoint a staff to barter and tell in order to get rid of them, the good old War Office fulfilling its old role of setting the work gointr ai.id then forgetting all about it. As a result millions of pounds worth of matprial was disposed of without the slightest check on the part of the.higher authorities, accounts involving hundreds of thousands boiug passed without so much as a glauce, and contractors coming in with an eye to business and making John Bull bleed at every nore. The tumour of what had beer, done started as a whisper and grew to have the volume of Stentor, so that at last the Government apjointed a Royal Commission to sift ? the charges to the bottom. And this body has been holding sittings ever pinoe, examining witnesses both of England and Suutfi Africa and disentangling a web which for intricacy and trickery is without a parallel in the realm. We had war scandals before—and the nation had been shocked and the authorities had decided that "it shouldn't happen again." But it did happen again—several times; and the guilty in each instance escaped Scot free, and there has been a fairly general feeling that "a stinging report 1 ' and more good resolutions would he the end of the present affair. Thus it is that the cablegram mentioned will have been read with a good deal of pleasure even though with a modicum of mild surprise.