BRITISH WAR METHODS

Waikato Times, Volume 130, Issue 21664, 26 February 1942, Page 5

BRITISH WAR METHODS

CRITICISM IN PARLIAMENT QUESTIONS ON HONGKONG (United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright) LONDON, Feb. 24 Referring in a House of Commons debate to the reported ill-treatment of Britons at Hongkong, Sir P. A. Harris (Labour) said that if the debate had been secret he would have mentioned the sinister, appalling and horrible incidents which it was reported were occurring. He was informed that the Government was preventing the circulation of these stories because of the bad effect they might have on morale. If these stories were founded on fact, as he believed they were, they would sooner or later leak out. Nothing destroyed confidence and faith so much as the suppression of news and an attempt to prevent unpleasant things reaching the people. Sir C. F. Entwistle (Con.) said much of the country’s disquiet was due to extraordinary inefficiency within the bureaucratic machine as a whole. The machine was still entangled with red tape. Many men were not worth the jobs they held, but apparently it was hard to get rid of them. Mr J. Maxton (Lib.-Lab.) said Sir James Grigg’s appointment as War Minister introduced a civil service element which hitherto they had prided themselves on keeping out. New Government Welcomed Welcoming the new Government. Mr James Griffiths (Labour) said recent events caused grave disquiet, which was accentuated by a widespread feeling that “we had not been all-out in recent months.” “We see slackness and complacency and the return of normality in our life, which is repulsive to the country’s best spirit,” he said. “If the war is to be waged successfully the three Services must be regarded as a whole and not as separate compartments of the war effort. It is questionable whether central control of the Air Ministry is adequate.

“The Army is still too much based on 1914 methods—drilling, marching, saluting and obeying. If we are to win the kind of battles fought in Malaya and Libya we must be trained for that kind of fighting, depending on initiative for success, not blind obedience.”