Users' Dilemmas: Taking the Drivers.
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We have carefully .refrained from stirring up still further trouble for our owner-readers in respect of Army attractions for their regular drivers. We have. published, from time to time, the bare announcements and particulars of A.S.C. requirements, but we have not urged drivers to go. This abstention on our part can in no sense be stigmatized as an unpatriotic action. It is open to the military authorities to train recruits, and to turn them into drivers, as they are now doing, exactly as owner-readers have in the past trained the men who now serve them, or until recently did so. We are able and glad to note a considerable extension of A.S.C. training of drivers, and this not only in London. Such Methods are as they should be. The continued depletion of the ranks of trained drivers in commercial service is to be regretted, and is, to a not inconsiderable extent unnecessary. Only during the first few months of the war was it unavoidable, and the new training methods have been instituted none too soon. Furthermore, the pressure should be on private-car owners first ; they are not engaged in the chain of Army supply.
This journal, as a matter of fact, has for many months been alive to the troubles which have now overtaken so many owners, and which happenings' have caused the base line of qualifications for new commercial drivers to be pushed down very low indeed. We have on several occasions, during the past eight months, strongly urged the establishment of a training organization at each motor factory, but we have to own to disappointment with the degree of heed that was paid to our suggestions. There are, we know, good reasons for some avowed inability to follow that advice, of which we are told in not a few directions where we have made recent inquiry.
'We cannot agree that it is impracticable for every works in the country to do anything. A driver can. be taught on a chassis which is smaller than those for which the War Department is calling, and we are convinced that the retention of one mediumsized or old chassis, per works, for the purposes with which we are dealing, will in no event bring down upon the maker either intervention or opprobrium. The few who have "Taken time by the forelock " in this matter have materially benefited themselves, whether they be manufacturers or owners, and we trust that their foresight will not be negatived by further avoidable impressments of personal services. It is the duty of the military authorities to train their own men as hard and as quickly as they can. They undoubtedly are in a. position, in this regard, which WaS denied them earlier.