WAR FUNDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 25

WAR FUNDS.

I am not concerned with the apparent personalities behind tsoine correspondence in your columns on the above. Divorced from these the subject calls for comment, not on the methods adopted in distribution of such funds, or whether or no they have been rightly administered, but on the continued and apparently widespread need of the funds by ex-eerviceiuen of the Imperial forces aud our own men wlio served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. It may have been aud not unlikely was necessary for some form of immediate provision for men demobilised and thrown on their own resources iu a world grown somewhat strange to them during their absence at the front. But to suggest that there should continue such an uncertain and degrading system of providing the necessities ot life for men whom the Empire at one time was glad to acclaim as "heroes' , should bring a blu-sh of shame. England's greatness may have been built on suck a system, or worse; but England's, greatness will fade, as did the greatness of other nations, if she persists in believing that in these more enlightened (V) times men will continue to serve her and remain content to be thrown on the scrap heap, recipients of relief as compensation for their disabled state, or poverty, by way of relief funds. There can be no evading the matter. If these men were good enough to serve the Empire in its hour of need, then they are entitled to certain, not uncertain, compensation in tlieir hour of need. No form of "dole," no matter by whom administered, can retain the self-respect of men so placed. We have nothing to flatter ourselves on in supporting or for having supported such, an inequitable system for over 20 years. Our Empire stands supreme as the greatest on earth. Is it fitting that men who served it and helped retain it in that proud position should be rewarded in the manner disclosed by the recent statement of the general secretary of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association, and which is not all the story of the relief required and extended through other channels ? Is this, too. to be the "'reward" ahead of our sons perhaps some time in the future? What can we expect? Or are w e content to reap the inevitable reward due to Uβ by our indifference to the value of human life, however bent, battered and broken tit may be. We should remember the ! cause by which such men are so, and i compensate them as of right accordingly. i BftTTTfiff gnBM. .