§ CAPTAIN PIRIEI beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether there are at the present time only 30 officers of the Indian Staff Corps who have passed through the Staff College, while there are no fewer than 142 appointments on the Staff of the Army headquarters, Army commands, and districts; and, if this be so, whether, in view of the necessity to the efficient organisation of the Army that Staff officers should be experts trained to Staff work in the highest school, he will take immediate steps to afford facilities to a larger number of selected officers to attend the courses of the Staff College?
§ LORD GEORGE HAMILTONThe statement in the first part of the hon. Member's Question is correct, but I must point out that the whole of the 142 appointments on the Staff are not reserved for officers of the Indian Army, half being filled from the British service. The question of increasing the number of officers of the Indian Army at the Staff College has been under consideration, but there are considerable difficulties in the way.
§ CAPTAIN PIRIEI beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that considerable dissatisfaction exists among the Staff Officers in India at the want of a body of properly trained staff clerks, these posts being at present filled by men who are units of the 163 garrisons, possessing no special qualifications, and merely detailed temporarily for these duties; and whether, considering the great increase in work thrown upon the staff by the division of the Indian Army into four Commands, he can devise new regulations calculated, by the offer of improved conditions and prospects, to create and maintain a larger class of adequately trained men to fill these posts in future?
§ LORD GEORGE HAMILTONThe question has been under the consideration of the Government of India and of the Secretary of State in Council. There are financial and other difficulties in the way of introducing an establishment of staff clerks for service in India, but the matter will not be lost sight of.