"HOME SERVICE" ANOMALIES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 400, 13 August 1918, Page 2

"HOME SERVICE" ANOMALIES.

(To the Editor.) Sir —1 am in entire agreement with the general tenor of your leader of Friday last upon the impropriety and absurdity of giving doctors and dentists and other noncombatants military rank and military pay. Their untrained figures not only give them a grotesque appearance but an enormous amount of legitimate annoyance is caused to the real soldier, who has not only to work but to take risks by serving these persona—worthy enough no doubt in their own proper atmosphere—playing at being military men. Wellington is full of these nondescripts . base reoor/l and transport men and a dezen other varieties of civilians, all togged up in officers' uniforms and extremely anxious to be called by their military titles.

But were you "poking borax" or was it only one of those unaccountable slips which Editors occasionally only very occasionally make, when you spoke, of the Chairman of the Commission, Sir Robert Anderson, as being "a soldier of high rank and wide experience.'' Sir Robert is no soldier but a civilian pure and simple, and if ever there was a clear case of Satan reproving sin it was when he complained of civilians being togged up in uniform and drawing military pay. Like Sir Andrew Aguecheek he was "dubbed a Knight with an unhacked rapier upon purely carpet considerations," and his military title of Brigadier-General was bestowed in order to allow him to draw high military pay. Ic would be Just as reasonable to make me a Doct<fr of Divinity because I yearly audit the accounts of a church, and far less expensive to the State.—Yours, etc., "SHRAPNEL"