BRITISH ARMY.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15979, 6 May 1924, Page 2

BRITISH ARMY.

APPLICANTS FOR STAFF. VERBOSE AND CARELESS. “Avoid slang, catch phrases, overstatements, and superlatives, and do not write for effect,” future candidates for admission to army staff colleges are advised in a report issued by the War Office on a recent entrance examination. Some of the comments are: — The besetting sins of the majority of the candidates were carelessness and lack of method. There was a general tendency to verbosity. Many candidates’ ideas as to future developments in organisation were unpractical. Not.one appeared to realise that the transport of an army can only be expanded on mobilisation by utilising vehicles of a type already existing in civil use. A very noticeable feature (of Imperial mobilisation perial organisation pipers) was that candidates had clearly paid much greater attention in their studies to matters concerning other countries — mainly the middle and Near East, Russia and the Ruhr —than to the requirements of their own British Isles. Many appeared to be too Imbued with poltics to the neglect of military thought, and, while they could write much about what they considered other nations wish to take unto themselves in the way, of foreign possessions, they could say very little about matters nearer home.

On the whole, the knowledge of the geography of the Empire was weak, as is shown by the fact that the only purely geographical question was attempted by fewer candidates than any other.