"LEAVE WITHOUT PAY"

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 23, 26 January 1918, Page 6

"LEAVE WITHOUT PAY"

The practice adopted by the Defence Department of granting leave without pay to both officers and men of the Expeditionary Forces has come in for a considerable amount of. criticism recently (says Auckland Star). The system of leave without pay operates with men who are granted an extension of their ordinary final leave, besides Territorial officers who have been sent back from camp' pending settlement of the deadlock regarding their comrr.iss-ions, and men who have been given special leave after lengthy service at the front. In all three cases there is apt to be hardship in particular instances. Men who have Had their ordinary final Jeave .extended, for instance, are given the. option of going 6ack to camp if they find they are unable to support themselves when the military pay ceases. They are given permission to don mufti for the purpose of going back to their occupations. As ai matter of fact, however, many of these soldiers find it impossible to resume work in this manner, and they soon find themselves in financial difficulties. The only thing left for them to do is to return to camp,' but this. of course, is distinctly hard on them. To he offered leave from camp and to be unable to accept it because of the money difficulty involved is what the soldier would call "hard to bear."

Mr: T. W. Kirk, Director of the Horticultural Division, speaking at tho Nurserymen's Conference in Christ - church, told a story which had got into one of the local papers regarding the danger of poisoning' from eating fruit which had been sprayed. Mr. Kirk said that after closely investigating cases of alleged poisoning from fruit, he had found that not in one instance had it been due to the spraying mixture. As an experiment fruit bad been picked from a. tree an hour after spraying, and tho doctors had found Hint/ a person would, have to eat 1-j- bushels of apples at one sitting, the skins as well, to obtain a medicinal dose 'of. arsenic. "By that time," said Mr. Kirk, "the person would certainly experience a pain."