§ CAPTAIN CRAIG (Down, E.)To ask the Secretary of State for War whether it is the intention of the Army Council to bring officers from disbanded units into regiments in the Special Reserve, with seniority according to the dates of their commissions; and whether such action will have the effect of placing them, in many instances, over the heads of existing officers in the regiments to which they are appointed.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) It is the intention that officers of disbanded Militia units joining units of the Special Reserve shall take rank in accordance with the date of their appointment to the rank they held at the date of transfer. In the case of an officer electing to join a battalion of a regiment other than his own 222 in which there is no vacancy for an officer of his rank, he may, if the commanding officer be unwilling that he should rank in accordance with the date of his appointment to the rank he holds at the date of transfer, be transferred in the rank he holds, his appointment to that rank boarding the date of transfer to the now corps. The reply to the second part of the Question is therefore in the affirmative.