Luton is promised a visit from His Highness the Duke of Connaught and Field-Marshal Viscount French, Commander in Chief of the Home Forces, for the opening of the new club of the local branch of the Comrades of the Great War, and we hear that Lady Wernher, who had been a generous contributor to the new institution, and the Mayor are expected to take part in the opening ceremony.

The Comrades claim membership of 368 discharged service men in the Luton branch, and 58 in connection with the Dunstable post formed some six weeks ago, independent of a strong list of honorary supporters, and the premises in Upper George Street, which have been rented from the Mayor, afford such a generous measure of accommodation that the club will have ample scope for extension as the need arises.

For a start those who have the project in hand are limiting the enterprise to the provision of a lounge, bar, billiard-room, games room, offices and also baths,and the work of internal decoration and alteration is being pressed on as quickly as labour considerations will admit in the hope that the necessary fitting up and furnishing may be sufficiently advanced to allow of the opening taking place in about three weeks' time.

We understand that the Luton club is to be the administrative centre of the Comrades movement for a radius of some miles, from which the organisation of smaller branches and 'posts,' as they are called, will be directed. Dunstable already has a post, and Leighton Buzzard is very shortly to receive attention.

Meanwhile, the Luton branch of the National Federation of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers, which has been in existence since last October, has become 280 strong, and has succeeded in making a sub-branch at Dunstable an established fact. From the steps the Federation are also taking to thoroughly organise the area, it seems as if the two bodies are inevitably destined to a policy of competition and rivalry which may embitter the relations of men who should be bound together by the closest ties, and materially lessen their prospects of exercising the influence they are justly entitled to wield.

Although, locally, members of both bodies may assert that they are not up against the other, the fact remains that a very vigorous spirit of opposition has been in evidence at every meeting one or the other of the organisations has had for missionary purposes, and, indeed, at almost every turn, and the Headmaster of Dunstable Grammar School, speaking on this aspect of the matter at a Dunstable meeting, exactly hit off the sentiments we have more than once expressed in making a strong plea that the rival bodies should come together in one organisation.

Needless controversy has been engendered by the heads of both movements, and things have been said on either side that might well have been left unsaid, but, after all, if the organisations act strictly up to the principles of their respective constitutions there is not a pin to choose between them, and, if discharged men are really keen on building up one solid, united organisation that shall have no concern other than that of looking after their interests, they are quite strong enough to do it, instead of frittering away their opportunities in sectional strife.

[The Luton Reporter: Tuesday, April 16th, 1918]