WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 52, 1 March 1916, Page 9

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE RAILWAY MEN. MILITARY MATTERS.

M (Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, February 28. il The authorities do not appear to be M greatly perturbed by the threat of jj '• drastic measures" which becu M hurled at them by the secretary of the •Amalgamated Society of Railway Ser- M vants in support of the men's demand Aj for higher wages. Mr. Massey and Mr. A] Hemes have explained to various deputations that an all round increase of one shilling a day would amount to rather more than £200,000 a year, and that w] the whole matter will have to be referred to the Cabinet before anything can be decided; but they have given no indication of their own disposition to- Ti wards the demand nor of the date on rii which they will be ready with a reply. It is understood that the general manager, who wants money for many other _. purposes, and who is more familiar with ga Home rates of pay than with colonial conditions, thinks the men have chosen a very inopportune time for making their claim, and feels they should abide OT by the undertaking they gave last year. mi to seek no increase during the continuance of the war. The railway employees, so the official argument runs, have sti suffered no more than other workers a have from the inevitable increase in the C: cost of living, and they have no more right to expect the State to protect them from the' operation of a natural law. THE OTHER SIDE. " There are plenty of eager advocates of the other side of the ease, both inside and outside of the railway service. They - , refuse to admit that" the men are in any Q i way bound by the resolutions they e _ adopted last year, proclaiming their intention to abstain from making any demand for increased pay till the country bo was through the war. They hold that mi Mr. Massey's failure to observe his spec:- mi fie promise to keep down the cost of -. . living relieved them of an obligation they assumed in good faith on the under- r ( standing that the purchasing power of a t their present wages would be main- ue tamed. With this poiht established they proceed to demolish the argument that the increases given four years ago were i n intended to settle the wages question for he all time. These increases, they say, wi were merely compromises, representing not what the men wanted, or what was 'their due, -but what the party politi- Ai dans would give them when they found de themselves more evenly balanced in Par- Et liameht than they had been for twenty Shears bfeore. The final contention, and really the one that should count, is that all the railway men, considering their hours sit and conditions, and their special respon- th " sMities,' are the worst paid servants in •- of "the State, and therefore the last that should be asked to shoulder a special burden in connection with the war. re -Thai flic Minister of Finance would have K< no difficulty in finding the money re- °I qnired if his colleagues should make up ._*S r Jo accede, to the men's dc- ' doubt. B1 That he win not allow the mere question wt ; _ of finance to be put forward as an ex- u< ■;■ - enactor refusing them is equally certain sti SOLDIERS AND DRINK. \;«| g0 f 0d , deal ,° f loCal intmst and s °*e we bttle feeling have been aroused by the Zl d.scnssions between the Minister of Dr) Defence and the deputations that waited bi upon him m Christchnrch on Saturday wconcerning the drink question and - its relation to soldiers. Mr. Allen is the most criticised member of the Cabinet rei at the present time, but there is a very ca general agreement among people who ag incline „„_,„ towards the liquor trade be nor to the prohibitionists, that he •handled the deputations very frankly ' and very tactfully. The correspondence be, dealing with this matter appearing-in an the local newspapers appears to be'in- "" spired by the extremists -of one side or SP' the other, and no one acquainted with the facts seems to attach more weight ' to it than Mr. Allen does. That a num- fe ber of soldiers, abuse their leave by W drinking more th.an is. good for them in; when they come into town everyone may eh see for himself who cares to keep his nc eyes open, and even anti-prohibitionists are warmly supporting" Mr. Allen in the restrictions he is imposing • upon the s° hotels. The difficulty about the whole m business is, that after all the efforts of a' well-meaning, people to provide the le soldiers with safer resorts, the hotels af remain tbe only easily accessible places w: in which the men may obtain, refresh- ni ment and meet their friends. There is nc a soldiers' club and a returned soldiers' club here, both admirable institutions in their-way, but they are maintained in by voluntary effort, and on a scale that Al would be simply overwhelmed if a tenth se of the soldiers who come into town at qIJ night- sought their hospitality. The lm men who cannot, be trusted to behave Tt themselves when on leave constitute a ta very - small proportion of the hundreds &D that drift about the streets, but it would be better for the reputation of their comrades if these deplorable ex- E) ceptions to the general rule were kept to their quarters till they obtained a !° better appreciation of the meaning of discipline. RECRUITING, fie It is doubtful if the undertaking of sti the Minister of Defence to retire irom hi the Cabinet if the failure of the present iv recruiting scheme should not be followed by conscription will materially assist in filling the ranks of the Rein- st forcements. The manhood of the coun- El try is not concerning itself so much "' about Mr. Allen's political career as it c" la about the provision he is making for tl, the men who volunteer for the front fe and for their dependants. The reports ot that Parliament will meet in April to T* l amend the Pensions Act in the directions public opinion has indicated per- c 0 sist, but the men going into camp now m have no assurance on this point, and hundreds of married men are holding sls .back for some definite assurance from *° the Minister. At the closing ceremony in connection with the Patriotic Exhi- • bition on Saturday evening, ' Madame ac Boeufve, the wife of the late French Consul, emphasised many of the stories that have been told of the admission of enemy subjects to the Reinforcements, , and protested in the strongest manner „ possible against what she called the tt carelessness and indifference of the (-. M ; -aister. "In any other country," this al outspoken lady said, "a word or a sug- f( gestion of suspicion would be gratefully tl accepted by the military authorities; a! but here If you communicate your in- f ( formation regarding the enemy alien n j percentage of the soldiers in the army, j _ you feel you are absolutely offending i v the military authorities, who will even v go so far as to call Germans Italians in tl order to prove themselves right." m