THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8277, 2 November 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1906.

In the middle of the Nineteenth Century there was a very widespread belief that the Age of War waa passing away, and that the Federation of Mankind waa within sight. At the commencement of the Twentieth Cantury we are reluctantly realising that the safety of a nation lies in its power and preparation to repel attack, and that the new democracies nan no more escape "the burden'of militarism" than did the old monarchies. The result h that even the Imperial War Office, whioh so long escaped the broom of the energetic reformer by the aid of the delusion that there was little need to reform what was rapidly becoming obsolete, is being slowly pruned of t its worthless tranches and trained into more fruitful shape. The inquiry into the doings of the Stores Department during the South African War revealed, says a contemporary, such amazing incapacity and business bungling on the part of officials who handled Imperial stores worth

many millions of pounds sterling that the introduction of business metnods is demanded by I'ritJsb publio opinion, Mr llaldaite, the Imperial Secretary of State for War,' has oommenced to "remedy this deficiency in adminiatrntioa by the training of a number of army officers in business methods, 'this ought to have been dona Joug ago, but is better done late than never. Moreover it is only part of a general movement in the direction of , the better education of those who tuke part in the direction of the vvhi machine, a movement whkio nan only be regarded aa completed when tbelraperia' army is purged of every officer who regards the holding of a commission as a gentl-mnnly way of passing time. This will be all to thn advantage cf uapable and studious officers, of whom the Army has never been in lack, but who bare notoriously been kept in the background by the sooial influences, exerted on behalf of the incapable and ':he careless. Good men have occasionally won their way t>> the front rank in spite of all impediments, and when the road to advancement is smowthed for them we may reasonatly anticipate that an immense improvement will be visible in every branch of the Imperial Army organisation. The old worn-out system could nor. have been maintained. It would have been fatal for the Empire to have attempted to carry it into the New Military Age upon which the century opens.