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Show oo OFFICERS' MESS IN THE BRITISH ARMY Another item of expense in the British Brit-ish army Is mess subscriptions. According Ac-cording to the letter of tho law these should not exceed 10 shillings under ordlnnry circumstances and 15 shillings shill-ings in exceptional cases per month. Actually this only represents a fraction frac-tion of tho contributions. There are band and other funds to be kept up, to which the young subaltern Is not asked, but is told, to subscribe. Tho mess, considered as a club. Is as costly cost-ly as tho collective membership of two or three of the best London institutions insti-tutions of that description, yet there Is no rent to pay for mess quarters and coal Is free. I do not suppose the maVrled officer who does not walk into the anteroom more than two or three times in a week pays much less than 30 a year toward its upkeep and that of tho band, gomes fund, and so on Suppose tho number of officers doing duty with a regiment to be twenty. Fifteen shillings a month per member would total up to 180 a year to buy papers and pay a few soldiers as waiters, wait-ers, but the actual contributions amount to a great doal more, to say nothing of profits on salo of wines, which even nowadays are not a negligible negli-gible asset. How Is all this money spent? Principally in giving entertainments, enter-tainments, which, however popular they make a regiment In Its corporate corpor-ate capacity, are of small benefit to the individual junior officer and can hardly be considered as contributory to its fighting efficiency. It gives the necessary glamour, but does not. enhance tho value of the military machine. ma-chine. It Is the prodigious waste and the false idea of what is necessary to keep up the prestige of a regimont which aro the causes, leaving aside Insufficient pay, of the dearth of candidates can-didates for the army. London Telegraph. |