On the motion for adjournment at Whitsuntide on Wednes- day,
Captain Clive called attention to the appointment of Colonel Morgan. We cannot find space to go into the
details of the case, and to attempt to treat the matter in a brief summary might very likely do injustice to the officer in question. Without, however, raking up the past or encourag- ing any vindictive action, we feel bound to say that Captain Clive, Mr. Morrell, and Sir Frederick Banbury did no more than their duty as Members of Parliament in protesting against Colonel Morgan's reappointment. Whatever view may be taken of Colonel Morgan's private character, which, personally, we are quite willing to admit is as good as Colonel Seely represented, it appears to us little short of a scandal that an officer who behaved so ineptly and so carelessly in regard to such a matter as the keeping of his own honour and the honour of his Service free from all suspicion. and whose action was reported on so unfavourably by a Royal Commission as was Colonel Morgan's, should be reinstated in the Army just as if he had been guilty of nothing but a breach of some pedantic technical regulations. He set a Service specially open to temptation a very bad example when it was, above all things, necessary that a good example should be set and a scrupulously exact standard maintained. To pass this over as if it were nothing is surely a grave error. It is exceedingly disagreeable to write as we have written, but for those who have always pleaded, as we have pleaded, for the highest standard in the public Service, a protest seems to us absolutely necessary.
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