The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1915. THE WAR OFFICE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6, 6 September 1915, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1915. THE WAR OFFICE.

Tiio liritish' IV,iii-; Office lias come in (or severe entici-sm under many heads, since tlie great expectations °f the Spring; campaign Ijave nofil $o- far.,] 'hheh realised, ami,many newspapers, jiofabiy* the .Xorelicßffd If-- gr*Wp, 0 gone, to" sucji extreme lengths that their words have heen scandalously unpatriotic. It is therefore somewhat refreshing to find that London 1 ruth finds something good to say about the work of this much-maligned institution. A writer in this well-known 'Journal 1 i!ells , ( us that die, .has -heen sttulvhig'tlie ihanners and customs of the HVar dflice for about twenty-five yoats' lin'd' 'sitting s in judgment on itt one’e a'week’ all tlialb tinie..Hf wo things liaW astonished hi in about the War Oifficd in the presprit war... “The first is the marvellous celerity; and sjnoothness wit'h which all our, available; forces were mobilised and thrown into the scale whe'n the call came;,the War Office lias never done anything like that.‘nor anything on the sanio scale, in all its previous 'history. The second is that it has not broken down hopelessly in the task of creatine- out of nothing armies ten times the size of the first, while supplying and reinforcing a field army grown beyond all previous calculation.” Ho also says it has not only heen a question of improvising armies hut of improving organisation to administer and control forces trenmendously jn excess of the number anv British War authority ever had to deal with. What the work really meant is outlined' faintly in an interview with one departmental head, a high official who since Angn.st -4th (if" last vear had heen at the War Office seven days a week without intermission. except for one week-end. when his friends insisted on his having rest for health’s sake. His normal ’working day begins at nine, and lie works till seven or later, goes out to dinner, and returns and works for another two or three hours. There is no reason to snnnnse that his ease is exceptional. With such a ease in mind. “Truth” cannot agree with the people who hold that when anything goes wrong in any branch of military administration, “yon should at once hound down, the head of the department and- hang him on one of the i lamn-posts of Whitehall.” Tlip.heavy work of war is done by administrators at home, as well as by the men in the field, and if they escape the danger, they also miss the excitement, which comes to the man in the fighting line. There are, in the War Office, as in every walk of life, men doing as valuable service for the Empire as flic men in the fighting line.