On Thursday night Colonel Anson opened the ball with a
still more plausible case. Rich officers do not like India,—dancing there is so hot. So when a regiment is ordered to India, rich officers pay poor officers as substitutes, and remain at home inn comfort. The Bill prohibits such payments, and Colonel Anson, thinks that hard, particularly on men with bad livers. The answer is clear. It would be hard on the rich, but the officers of the- future will be the educated poor, who will like India, where they get double pay, opportunities, and active service. Such an officer- with a bad liver will exchange into another home regiment. It is. quite impossible for the State, while buying up vested interests,. to allow new vested interests to grow up. The officers of the future will not be the proprietors of the Army, but the Queen's- servants, bound to do as they are bid, or resign the service. Talk about French indiscipline ! If our officers were not a hundred times as good as our discipline compels them to be, the Army would be a mob in a week.
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