‘The duty devolving on the Association of paying Separation Allowances and Allotments of Pay to the wives and families of the Territorial Troops entails very heavy work and responsibility.... The first payment was due to be made on the 9th August, and consisted of Separation Allowance only up to the 31st of the month. The September payment was duly made on the 31st August. The number of Money Orders sent out up to and for that date was 13,328, and on 3rd September, orders were received to also pay a compulsory Allotment of Pay for each married soldier.’ Though they split an infinitive in doing so, this payment, too, was duly made on September 11th; but it involved a further 5,430 Money Orders with the corresponding, inevitable Army Forms. It is no part of our present purpose to enquire into the possibilities of simplifying Army Pay; least of all, to suggest the simplest method of a flat rate like the wage of a civilian. But it is within our province to point out the almost infinite possibilities of mistakes (even of the fraud which is so elaborately excluded) in the family register for each soldier of the number, sex and age of his children, in the paraphernalia of coupons, Postal Draft-books and Money-Orders, in the calculation and readjustment of rates owing to information advised from the soldier’s unit or to domestic changes reported or detected, in the grading of ‘unofficial wives’ and other official relationships, and, summarily, in the invention of a system which seems expressly designed to squeeze out of the officers administering it the last drop of the milk of human kindness without any compensating gain in the civil virtues of economy and efficiency.