RESTORATION PENSIONS

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 47, 24 August 1917, Page 6

RESTORATION PENSIONS

During the debate on the Addi-ess-in-Reply, and on frequent occasions since, members have not failed to impress on the Government the need for making a decided improvement in the New Zealand war pensions legislation. This week, Mr. E. P. Lee, the member for Oamaru, urged that,the Government should not be niggardly 'in its scheme. We do not think that it will be, but the great body of public opinion in,this country expects the Government to do a great deal more than morely to provide increased rates of pensions; it looks to the Government to bring down a broad and statesmanlike Bill which will remedy the existing anomalies, and will guarantee to, the men who have .gone and to those still to go that they will be justly treated. With the humanitarian British scheme before it, Cabinet should 1i.,..6 no difficulty in remodelling its war pensions legislation on sound and proper lines. . The'guiding principles that should be laid down are: (1).- Restoration to pre-aervice conditions as far ,as practicable; and. (2) equality of treatment in accordance with, pre-service conditions, irrespective of the rank which the soldier held in the Army. As restoration of the devastated territories is the creed of the Allies in their demands on Germany, so restoration of the incapacitated soldier and his dependents, and the dependents of the .fallen, to their pre-service condition within a maximum limit should be a guiding plank in New Zealand's national policy. The country, as The Post has previously maintained, can do no more, and certainly it should do no less. Moreover, such provision should not be spoken of as "generosity." Is" restoration generosity? We submit;not, because it only replaces the beneficiaries in the financial position they were in before; I the country cannot do even that in tho case of the men who were earning high salaries. And still less can it compensate many men for their sufferings, or wives for the loss of their husbands and children for the loss of their fathers. To speak of "generosity" in such connection, therefore, is an abuse of the'term, and we hope that in the coming debate we shall not hear it from either Ministers or members of Parliament. All the soldiers and their dependents ask for is justice—nothing more.