Are we really to suppose that when women with no
sense, or small sense, of decency and propriety attempt to pull strings and flutter their petticoats at the War Office, that great Department has no means of protecting itself and its charges It is not as though " petticoat influence " were a now thing. We have all heard of it in true and false reports. If the War Office has not got its own apparatus of justice, the sooner it invents one the better. Whether or not there was any means for protecting Lieutenant Barrett and defeating the disgraceful manoeuvres of Mrs. Cornwallis- West, we should have expected soldiers in high positions to behave more as men of the world. Sir John Cowans, without of course con- niving at Mrs. Cornwallis-West's intrigues, seems to have been unable to combine his naturally civil treatment of a woman with the essential object of firmly and finally putting her in her proper place. But this failure in mingled professional and social tactics was after all, as the Coup rightly found, no sufficient reason for forgetting Sir John Cowans's invaluable work or for depriving the country of his great services.
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