CIVIL EMPLOYMENT FOR SOLDIERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5209, 1 December 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

CIVIL EMPLOYMENT FOR SOLDIERS.

(From tlie Condon Times.) Tlie select committee appointed to enquire how far it is practicable that soldiers, sailors, and marines who have ir.oritoriou-lv served their country should be employed in such civil departments of the public service as they may be found fitted for, hive issued their report. By gradual steps, some of them attended with no difficulty, it lias been tlie policy of successive Governments, they say, to introduce into almost every branch of the Civil Service the print; pie of open competition for first appointment. Except in one or two of the high st departm-nts.of the State, the whole clerical staff is recruited ’by this process. A large proportion of tin; employes of lower grates are also chosen under this system. Was it, therefore, intended that the reference to tlie committee should anlhori-e them to inquire whether this policy ought to be reversed in favor of soldiers and sailors ? Tlie conmrttee have concluded that the reference to them does not authorise them to propose any such reversal. Civil serv mis of the following classes, reckoning from those of the lowest remuneration, are not appointed by open competition ; Temporary messengers, extra men in the Customs, boatmen i". the Customs, permanent messengers, office keepers, porters, Customs watchmen, &c., warders hi tlie convict service, letter carriers and rural post-office messengers, metropolitan policemen and members of tlie Irish Constabulary, paik keepers, copyi-t-*, military and navy clerks. So far as the navy is concerned, no stimulus appears to he required. The supply of seamen is now obtained almost exclusively through the training ships, to enter which hoys are voluntarily enlisted at the age of fifteen ; and there is no evidence that (so far as regards the boys themselves, however it may be as to their parents) at that age the prospect of civil employment after discharge would operate so ns to bring in more or better candidates. But, with respect to the army, the preponderance of evidence points in a different direction. The increasing inducements of civil life tend daily more and more to diminish the attractions of military life. This has necessitated twice in ten years a large increase to the daily pay of the soldier, without materially improving physically the stamp of men enlisted, “nine further stimulus is evidently desirable, and the committee believe that such a stimulus would he supplied by hoi ling out the prospect of a Government civil employ to the discharged soldier. There is good reason to believe that if it were well understood that a con-iderahle number of suitable civil employments were to he given to soldiers when their term of service expired, the effect on recruiting would be good, and that some men of a better stamp in ight be induced to enter the army. It is however the decided opinion of the Commander in-Chief and of Major-General Taylor, to whose evidence the committee would especially tlnw attention, that civil clerkshios and appointments of an analogous character should for the present be given only to non-commissioned officers aftorcompletion of the full period of service. The good effect of holding out the prospect of obtaining earlier appointments of this kind would be more than counterbalanced in the view of these eminent authorities by tlie drain which would remit from the ranks of con-nommissioned officers ; at any rate until the supply of these officers (one of the greate t difficulties of ail European armies) is in a much more satisfactory condition than at present. At tlie same time there appears to be no sufficient reason why well conducted privates might not he eligible for inferior appointments oven before tlie completion of their term of service.”