AUSTRALIAN ARMY

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 22, 26 July 1945, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN ARMY

REORGANISATION FORECAST

SYDNEY, July 25,

It is expected that General Blarney will lose the supreme power he has wielded for three years over the Australian Army soon, says the Sydney "Sun's" Canberra correspondent. A board similar to the old Army Board will probably be constituted as the final authority in the. Army. It is expected that General Blarney will remain operational commander and will retain^*W**4^ual powers vested in an operational eentiiiander. When questioned today as to whether General Blarney's authority was to be reviewed, the Army Minister (Mr. E. M. Forde) said he would neither confirm it nor deny it. The correspondent says that though Mr. Forde was non-committal, it is understood that a scaling down of the Com-mander-in-Chiefs power, which critics describe as "greater in extent than any previously possessed by any general in British history," has been under discussion for months." . The Army Board was abolished in 1942 -when the threat of invasion to Australia was very real. This placed tremendous powers in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief, but in view of the desperate need for swift decisions, such action was held to be necessary. Since then the war has receded from Australian shores, and it is now proposed that the power should be allocated between a board and the operational chiefs.