OFFICERS AND GIRLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1919, Page 12

OFFICERS AND GIRLS.

1 BRITISH ARMY SCANT)AI 0 LORDS SANCTION INQUIRY. ' , London, July 31. Serious scandals were mentioned in the House of Lords debate to-night on a motion for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the summary dismissal of the Honorable Violet Douglas Pennant, principal of the Women's Air Force. The Government has hitherto refused an inquiry, despite extensive agitation in the House of Commons and by friends in the press. The Earl of Stanhope, moving for the appointment of a Select Committee, declared that, the Government had permitted an unwarrantable stigma to reßt on Miss Pennant, because it feared scandalous disclosures of the relations during the war between the oilicers and the ■girls. He gavo as an instance Miss Pennant's discovery* that the colonel commanding an R.A.F. department, near London, permitted all-night leave to girls who were being trained in the camp. These girls constantly returned drunk from London in the small hours of the morning in Government motor-cars.

Another grave scandal affected a colonel and two women oilicers. Miss Pennant transferred the women and reported the occurrences, but she was promptly dismissed, while the colonel was merely transferred, and was subsequently'sent to a camp, where one of his former female companions was stationed. They lodged in the same house, where the landlady discovered the pair in the same room at three o'clock in the morning. Lord Weir, on behalf of the Government, reiterated that Miss Pennant had been dismissed because she was unsuitable.

The House df Lords agreed to the inquiry by 09 votes to 42.