§ GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOURasked the Secretary of State for War, If he will name the person who handed in to the Royal Commission on Promotion and Retirement the memorandum printed as Appendix N, containing suggestions for altering the existing organization and the ranks of the Line, which, if altered, as stated in the Report of the Commissioners, might remove the necessity for any compulsory retirement in the lower ranks; and, whether, before applying to the Treasury for more money 583 for the Army, he will cause a public inquiry to be instituted into the question of Army re-organization, which the Royal Commissioners did not enter upon, as they did not conceive it to be within their province to deal with it; the question referred to them being, "How to create the necessary promotion under the existing organization?"
MR. GATHORNE HARDY,in reply, said, the question of organization was one of the efficiency of the Army, and had nothing to say to promotion and retirement as a money question. If it was necessary to re-organize the Army it would be just as necessary to have arrangements for promotion and retirement as it would be in the other case. He must decline to make another inquiry into Army re-organization.