CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 November 1915, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

DEFECTIVE OFFICIAL WORK. We have had many proofs that the information service in the Mediterranean area is sadly deficient, and, while the public has displayed considerable patience over a period of several months, it is time to say that the methods of those responsible ought by now to be less chaotic (says the Lyttclton Times). A distressing case in point has just been brought directly under our notice. A lady who has given two sons to the Expeditionary Force called at the Lyttelton Times office with a very reasonable request. She asked that no further reports concerning her youngest son, who was reported as "missing" in a Press Association list of casualties printed on Tuesday. This poor, brave mother knows that her boy was killed in action on May 2, and buried two days later. She has conversed with a soldier who fought beside her son and saw him shot through the head and fall dead. The first intimation that came from the authorities concerning this victim of a Turkish bullet was that he was wounded on May 22. On June she was reported a.s being ''convalescent," and now he is described as "missing." We know quite well that these mistakes are purely accidental, and would seriously distress the senders of the messages and all the authorities if thpy knew of the inaccuracies. But it does seem cruel to misinform a parent in this way, and particularly cruel to again lacerate a mother's heart by reporting as missing a son who six montlis ago yielded up his life for his country. It is surely time the machinery for collecting and distributing information was greatly improved. The war is no longer an event that began yesterday. It has been proceeding for fifteen months, and the recording departments should be assuming something like order, \