CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 April 1921, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE.

“BACK TO SCARLET.” (To the Editor.) Sir, —-I notice in New 'Zealand newspapers mention without disapproval of the proposed reversion in England to scarlet and swords in some British regiments. As we are too prone to imitate the follies and extravagances of others, the indignant protests of the British Press and public should also be chronicled. The Times and Dajly Mail, aptly termed “the wizards of by-elections and necromancers of Carmelite House and Fleet Street,” denounce the proposals, and suggest tiiat it is not to be wondered at that a Government which acts so foolishly should lose public confidence, and, notwithstanding some alterations in its wasteful methods (notably a large reduction in its enormous “higher” education votes), fail to satisfy the clamour for retrenchment as assential to avert national disaster. Probably the almost unanimity with which the voting of three millions of pounds for clothing the army in scarlet—“discarding khaki, the uniform of sacrifice, crowned by victory,” and to deck out our troops “in an attire which to modern eyes looks obsolete and suited to the era of Brown Bess”—may avert the disaster. As to the sword project, the London Daily Mail of February 12 says:—“ln a few weeks, on April* I, unless vigorous resistance is offered by the public, all officers will be required to wear those absurd encumbrances known as swords. Thus reaction gathers strength. We may get back by degrees to the ridiculous military millinery, useless to the fighting man, and from its costliness a cruel tax on his family, which Thackeray criticised in. sudh scathing terms in his ‘Book of Snobs,’ and which most of us hoped had been for ever discarded as the result of the Great War and its lessons.” —I am, etc., SANITY. New Plymouth, April 5.