Promotion by Merit

Levin Daily Chronicle, 11 April 1918, Page 1

Promotion by Merit

Lord Derby, Minister of War, speaking in London some weeks ago, replied to critics who had suggested that the best officers did not always come to the top in the Army. He said that he and Sir Douglas Haig had long been working to secure that promotion should be by merit alone. Sir Douglas wrote to him: "It has been my increasing effort to bring merit and brainy to the front from wherever they be found.'' From the Territorials and the new armies, 9,516 men had been specially appointed to administrative and General Staff, posts. Lord Derby quoted the cases of Sir Auckland Geddes and Sir Eric Geddes.

Sir Douglas Haig's own new chief of Staff, who left the Army as a major, was a brilliant man of business in London before rejoining; Lord Craven, now a Lieutenant-general commanding a corps, left the Ariay as a colonel; another notable instance of a man coining" forward was Freyburg. Then there was a schoolmaster named Bradford, little more than a schoolboy when he went out, who was killed as a brigadier. Then there was young Asquith, now going on well after his bad wound.

Sir Douglas Haig had also told him of the case of a second cook of a college of Cambridge University, who had become a most efficient General Staff officer. There was a lawyer who commanded a Regular battalion of the Buffs during the Somme battle, and an ex-sergeant-major of cavalry who had gone to the colonies before the war, and who now commanded a British infantry brigade. A man who was mess sergeant at Mons was now celonel of an infantry battalion.

"It seems to me," added Lord Derby "that these cases themselves go to prove that there is no ring, and that merit comes to the top."