Spectator's Notebook
THE present fuss about courts-martial in the British Army of the Rhine seems to me to raise two issues which would be better discussed apart. The first, that of publicity, is relatively easily dealt with. Of course, military court proceedings ought to be reported in the press, but it is equally understandable that the Army authorities do not wish to push the present series under the noses of reporters hungry for copy. For it must be con- fessed that recent incidents in Minden and else- where do not exactly reflect credit on the British Army. While making every allowance for the boredom of soldiers stationed abroad as well as for the toughness of the regiment involved (and there are, so I should.think, a good many English towns that might find it difficult to put up with the Cameronians as guests), it is quite clear that the old rule stands: a large number of courts- martial means bad discipline in a unit—a matter which ultimately concerns that unit's officers. The whole affair poses a problem which is of more im- portance than the degree of accessibility of notices posted inside the British embassy in Bonn: the problem of what to do with an army billeted in peace time for the foreseeable future in a foreign country, whose language it does not know and whose habits it probably dislikes. There does not seem to be any satisfactory answer —least of all where a regiment of stern Presby- terians is concerned.
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