INSIDE THE WAR OFFICE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 91, 7 October 1911, Page 9

INSIDE THE WAR OFFICE

Till-: TROUBLES OF SFCRECY. The management of secret papers, within the War Ollice has always been | something of a problem. The system of sending them about in locked boxes, furnished with special locks, to which only certain highly-placed individuals possessed keys, was good in principle; but it was extremely troublesome, and it led to delays. The plan of pinning a special blue label on the outside of correspondence of this nature possessed the disadvantage that it indicated to everybody who handled the papers that the contents were confidential—no unauthorised person would be likely to fake the trouble to untie an ordinary lilt* of War Uilice papers to see what was inside. Besides the blue label to denote secrecy, there was the red label to denote urgency. The worst of these red and blue labels was that they became so common that it was almost impossible to take them seriously. The green label, on the other hand, was, comparatively speaking, rare; it indicated that the paper was concerned with a question to be asked in Parliament. Supposing that a question to be asked in Parliament is of an inconvenient kind, it is always of interest to the ollicial who has drafted the reply to note in the Times how skilfully his wording has been bowdlerised when the answur is actually given in the House. No actual perversions of the truth, you will understand . Xo terminological inexactitudes, but awkward corners are rounded oil', so to speak, and the questioner is somehow left no wiser than he was before.

War Ollice papers are enclosed in what arc technically known as "jackets"— sheets of tough paper the size of a double sheet of foolscap. On the outside are marked hieroglyphics which indicate the people to whom the paper is to go. In the old days the jacket used to be doubled in two, and then tied up tight with red tape; but some administrator (whose name has not been handed down to posterity as it ought to be) hit upon the device of not folding the jacket in two, so that now the paper opens out Hat. Still, there was something also to be said for the old arrangement. Under it, it was almost impossible to write inside when a file once began to become voluminous, because the thing used to shut up; the modern plan is a positive invitation to people to record their opinions—and they all avail themselves of the invitation. There are those who find a certain dilliculty in reading my handwriting at times, and on one occasion a very high authority indeed mistook the word "to" in a minute of mine for the figure "8." The figure "8" did not make sense, but that did not prevent the high | authority from adding a minute of his j own, based upon what he believed mine ■ was intended to convey. There ensued one of the most bewildering correspondences which has ever circulated even in the War Ollice. Nobody could understand what anybody else meant, but everybody recorded his opinion, starting from the erroneous assumption that he had discovered what the matter was' which was at issue. 1 should not be surprised if that correspondence is going on still.—Colonel Calhvell, in Blackwood's Magazine.