A Living Wage for Officers The improvements in pay and
promotion announced for officers in the three fighting services seem to have been concerted by the War Office, Admiralty, and Air Ministry together. It is true that the War Secretary, whose worst enemy would not deny him a flair for publicity, contrived to associate them in the public mind with the War Office particularly ; with, perhaps, this justification, that some of the new principles had operated in the Navy already. The magnitude of the change, where the Army is concerned, is sufficiently shown by the fact that over 2,000 officers received promotion last Monday. From the point of view of levelling up service careers to something nearer parity with the professions in civil life there is solid ground for satisfaction. The actual methods adopted may raise certain problems in their application. In the Army, and perhaps in the other services, the relation between ranks and duties will be varied ; majors, for instance, unless a war expansion supervenes, may be found quite commonly commanding platoons. On the side of adequacy the new scheme chiefly falls short in its provision for married officers. It leaves them very much handicapped between 3o and 4o. A generous system of wives' and children's allowances would have been well justified here, both on professional and social grounds, and would have set a good example to the civil departments.
* * * *
Previous page
