PRIVATE SOLDIERS AND OFFICERS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 126, 21 February 1941, Page 6

PRIVATE SOLDIERS AND OFFICERS

Treatment In City Hotels

discrimination charge DENIED Suggestions that certain hotels refused private soldiers admission to their dining-rooms but admitted oilicers were coni radieled by managers and receptionists at leading Wellington hotels yesterday. AH agreed in stating that no discrimination was being made between officers and rankers. A correspondent of a northern news-pa|H-i- stated that a volunteer in Hie aimed forces recently took his wife to a Wellington hotel for dinner, and was publiclv humiliated when the waitress told him officers only wore served iu the dining-room, and asked him to leave. As it happened, a civilian friend who was staying at the hotel saw the incident, and informing the waitress that they were his guests ordered dinner for three. The waitress had no choice but to comply. Inquiries yesterday failed to elicit at what hotel in Wellington this incident could have taken place. In general. private soldiers, as long as they comported themselves in a respectable way, were accorded exactly the same treatment as ollieers. “We have had many of our old customers coming back as privates and non-commissioned officers, and we certainly could not afford to turn them away,” it was stated at oue hotel. The manager of another recalled that during the last war men of the ranks were not generally permitted to dine in the same room with officers. Times bad changed, however, and today not only were privates to be seen staying at the hotel. drinking with their friends in the lounge, and dining in the public dining-room, but very often they were accompanied by officers. In the past, it had not been customary for officers and rankers to dine together, or mingle on ordinary social occasions, but it was not uncommon today. . , The opinion was expressed that much custom would be lost by any hotel so out. of touch with public sentiment of the present, day as to turn away soldiers from its dining-room