CANDID CRITIC.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7912, 28 July 1917, Page 1

CANDID CRITIC.

“REFORM” MEMBER SPEAKS OUT. TOO MANY REINFORCEMENTS. (Special to “Mail”). WELLINGTON, This day. Mr H. J. H. Okey, a Reform member of the House, in his speech on the Address-in-Reply, adopted the role of the candid critic. One of the biggest mistakes made in regard to defence, he stated, was the setting-up of Lord Liverpool's Own (the New Zealand Rifle Brigade). Our men, he contended, should all have gone Home as New Zealanders, not some of them walking* a different step and wearing a different ribbon from the rest, and having to be reinforced by men trained in the same way. (Hear, hear). Forming that separate brigade involved having another general of brigade with his staff, additional transport, ambulance wagons, and other equipment, and meant a great deal of extra expense, said Mr Okey. Another mistake; he declared, was that the department had been sending forward too many reinforcements. (Hear, hear). They had made certain promises to the Old Country, said Mr Okey, and he thought that no man wanted to change one iota from that. (Hear, hear). But they found that an accumulation of 5000 to 6000 men had occurred at Home, where there was no position for the men to take up, and nothing for them to do. The Home Government naturally wished to use them to some purpose, and asked the New Zealand Government to allow them to be formed into a new brigade. He maintained that those men had no right to be taken away from the purpose of reinforcements for which they were sent. The formation of the new brigade again meant another brigadier-general and his staff, additional hospital vans and transport; and they could not draw upon those men for reinforcement purposes, because they had been into action as a brigade.