THE NEW ZEALAND ARMY.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 April 1917, Page 7

THE NEW ZEALAND ARMY.

QUESTION' OF PROMOTIONS. (From Our Own Correspondent)'; Wellington. April 3. Communications from members of the New, Zealand Forces at the front indicate the existence of a strong feeling that the experienced men, who joined the forces at an early stage of the war and have seen actual, service in the field, are not getting a fair -share of the commissions. The complaint is not a new one. of course, and the public has been inaile fairly familiar with the arguments on both sides. The Defence authorities here insist that it is necessary to send a fixed number of commissioned officers with each reinforcement draft; most of these ollicers have been promoted from the n.e.o. classes in New Zealand or transferred from the Territorial Force. The facilities given for the promotion of men ilready serving >n the field have been imn ased from time to time, and it appears mnv that approximately 35 commissions per month are granted to members of the Forces under various headings. But not more than 12 of these men per month go forward with the monthly reinforcements), out of about 45 officers, and reading between the lines of official communications, it is possible to gather that the General Officer Commanding the New Zealand Division would liko to see his men getting a larger share of the promotions. The existing arrangement certainly presents some strange anomalies. The G.O.C. is empowered to select each month six men who are suitable for commissioned rank and send these men back to New Zealand by the first available troopship in order that thev may I lake commissions with the reinforcements. These men do not receive their commissions until have served a probationary period in one of the training camps in this country, and their seniority is reckoned from the end of the probationary term. Thus a sergeant who has had a couple of years' experience of warfare and who has earned his commission in the battle of the Somme may come back to New Zealand and find that in the training camps, and later in the field, Be is junior to a small army of brand new lieutenants who have learned their soldiering in the bloodless schools of Trentham and Fentherstou. This sort of thing actually happens, and naturally it creates a sense of injury. , It is easy to say that all the new commissions should go to men who have already seen service, but an arrangement of that kind seems scarcely feasible. In the first place it is highly undesirable from the point of view of the efficiency of the New Zealand Infantry Division, that all the highly qualified n.e.o.'s should be promoted. It has happened often in action that sergeants havo had to lead platoons or even companies owing to casualties among the officers; it is an axiom of the army that the efficiency of a. regiment depends Yore laigely on the efficiency of the non-coms! Tn the second place it is only fair that the avenues of promotion should be kept open to some extent to the men who havo qualified in the training camps. The standard of New Zealand's new junior officers admittedly is very high, and general experience in the trenches is not necessarily an effective substitute for the specialised training, based on war experiences and guided by expert knowledge, given in the training camps here and in the United Kingdom. The problem admittedly is a difficult one and probably it will continue to be solved in a rough and really way by a series of compromises among conflicting claims.