PLAIN SPEAKING BY LORD WOLSELEY.

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 89, 28 February 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

PLAIN SPEAKING BY LORD WOLSELEY.

The following extracts from the evidence given recently by Lord Wolseloy before the Eoyal Commission on the Civil Service will be read with interest : — The tools supplied to the army are bad, extremely bad, taking them* generally. You will find the picks, shovels, axes, and all those descriptions of stores are very bad. The Government of the day cut the prices down so low that inferior articles are purchased. For instance, when we sent out a large number of troops to Canada, they took out a number of axes. The only purpose they served was to amuse the people. They were absolutely useless. The pattern was infamously bad ; I fancy there are many of that pattern still in store. The pattern, of course, was dense stupidity on the part of the people who bought the axes. > We do not buy bad patterns now. ' The only thing I have to complain of at the present moment is that we buy articles of inferior quality. The price is scamped by pressure from above.: I think that our implements have always been inferior, even from days immemorial. I can remember it is described in Napier's Peninsular War that in our sieges under the Duke of Wellington we used to try and break into the French mines in order to get their tools, our tools being made of poor metal. From my own experience I can say that the tools we had in the Crimea were bad ; and I am quite sure that if you sent to-morrow for an implement called the billhook' — the common billhook that is used in the army — you will find it made of very inferior stuff, little better than hoop-iron. If you chop wood with, it, the wood chops it. You mufat always have an officer at head quarters, called the Quarter-

master - General ; but you should have in the field, with every army, ! an officer -called a QuartermasterGeneral, or a ; Deputy Q,uartermaßter- ■ General, according to the size of the - -force, and one great advantage would be that instead of the General commanding, and .the people at , home and the administration, and the public at large, not knowing whom to hang in case of failure, you will have the Quartermaster-General to hang in case of any failure in supplies. Speaking* generally, the education standard of the army is enormoudy improved. It has gone up in a most wonderful way. The proportion of men with superior education who come into the army now is' something immensely superior to what it was even 10 years ago, and it goes On steadily increasing. They (the Germans) work their army much, more economically, because their officials are underpaid. Bismarck only receives £1500 a year — our Secretary of State receives £5000. That gives you 'the best idea of the expeuse of the two people. Perhaps our Secretaries of State are more valuable than Bismarck — I do not know. There are very often in the War Office too many references upon small and unimportant subjects. There are also very- frequently minutes written' on papers dealing with important army subjects of which the writers very often really have no practical knowledge. Generals on active service are not hampered by such unnecessary proceedings, because a General who is worth anything throws it all into the nearest river by him. . He would not stand it. He is master of the position, and he does what he likes. He is practically so powerful in the field that no one can dictate to him — no one. I think the system of naval transport is unsatisfactory to the army. It gives rise to ill-feeling almost, I might say, between the army and the navy. The very moment a regiment is put on board one of her Majesty's troop ships the' command of their own men is taken away from the officers, and they have a very unpleasant time of it, generally speaking, on board her Majesty's troop ships, so much so that, speaking roughly and roundly, the soldiers of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, hate going on board one of her Majesty's troop ships. They would much prefer going on board the ordinary ships — steam packets and commercial ships, not men-of-war.