- The Tail and the Teeth Mr. Head's - lucid and often witty
presentation of the Army Estimates made a good impression on the House of Commons, and the country as a whole can find in their contents grounds for comfort if not for complacency. One of the Army's chief needs is for more regular soldiers, and the prospects of meeting ihis-need are almost bound to be improved by the new system of a twenty-two year engagement, breakable every three years and capable of being extended to the age of fifty-five. The ten per cent. cut in the staff of the War Office (has any other Ministry achieved a comparable reduction ?) is evidence of a genuine attempt to redress the balance between what Mr. Head called the tail and the teeth. It is true that the modern fighting man does require a large and complex administrative machine to supply his ever-increasing needs, and it is true that a law of diminishing returns governs all attempts to reduce the size of that machine; but in the British Army there is plenty of slack to take up before that law begins to operate. Mr. Head did not say very much about new weapons and equip- ment, but his cautious reference to the new anti-tank weapons which will be in the hands of their users next year will, when the time comes for it to be expanded, put the striking-power of our field formations in a new and very favourable light.
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