WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, 7 August 1918, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

defence expenditure, THE COMMISSION’S REPORT. ■' Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, August 5. The report of the Defence Expend!ture Commission appeared in the morning papers on Saturday without any explanation of the long delay In its publication. It must be just upon three months since- the document was sent to the Governor and in the ordinary course it would have reached His Excellency’s advisers only a few tours later. It has been surmised that during the interval Ministers have in communication with Sir Robert Anderson, the Chairman of the Commission, who returned to Australia immediately after the presentation of the report, with a view to elucidating one or two points that appeared to l)e obscure, but there is authority for saying that in no material particular has the document been amended since it received the Commissionefs , ''slSna. tures. Probably the fsal explanation of the delay has been the anxiety of | the Minister of Defence to inform himself fully upon the various matters mentioned in the Report before pre. paring the memorandum by which it is now accompanied. THE ESSENTIALS. I The Commission reports that “in all essentials the Administration has succeeded,” but it has to be noted that administration spelt with a capita* “A” means the Government and not the management of its military affairs. The Government, thanks largely to the zeal and courage of the Minister of Defence, has “delivered the goods,*' as the colloquial phrase goes. It has spent forty millions' bn the war without the least trace of fraud or speculation, or patronage; it has sent 100,000 men to the otuer end of the world fully equipped; its supplies have been purchased well; its transport arrangements have been admirable, and its provision for the sick and woundecr lias been exceptionally good. This is commendation of which Sir James Allen well may be proud and in which his colleague, the Hon. 'A. M. Myers, as Minister of Munitions and Supplies, must shore. It is a great feather In the cap of New Zealand to have escaped the sordid scandals that have overtaken almost every other country engaged in the war. THE WEAK SPOTS.

The weak spots in the Defence Department to which the commissioners specially direct attention are just those critical observers have been suspecting since the beginning of the war. Sir Robert Anderson and his cotleagues do not mince matters in saying that the administrative side of the Department is faulty. The author of the report, whom no one acquainted with the personnel of the Commission will have any difficulty in identifying as the Chairman himself, refers in scathing terms to military airs and frills and pay, and particularly to military allowances. He discovered that officers on camp staffs, while receiving £52,500 in fairly generous pay, supplemented this amount by £31,300, just upon 60 per cent, by way of allowances, with a number of perquisites 'addition. A dental ■“Major” was receiving £720 a year, while a fighting Major with a distinguished services in the field to h:s credit was receiving £486 a year. The invention of excuses for still further “allowances” nad been reduced to a fine and profitable art.

THE MINISTER’S MEMORANDUM. The memorandum Sir James Allen lias attached to the report does net augur well for reform. The Commission found that high-sounding and utterly misleading titles were borne by officers performing very commonplace duties and suggested that a clerk should be called a clerk and a storekeeper a storekeeper; but to this the Minister replies that “the designations are in accordance with the Imperial arrangements to standardise all matters naval and military.” It seems if a civilian in uniform is given charge of a grocery store or blasksmith’s shop in camp, he mUst bear a five or sixTvord title, with a salary to match, in order to conform to an Imperial regulation which probably never contemplated such a case. However, a conference of district commanders and other officers is to be held to consider the Commission’s suggestions and from its deliberations some good may come. The danger is that these military gentlemen will read into the Commission’s commendetTiDn of the Minister’s achievements approval of the administration of his department, ■