DEMOBILISATION AND REPATRIATION.
Questions relating to demobilisation, and repatriation have received some prominence of late, but no concrete proposals have been submitted for discussion. The Defence Department seems to have taken this in hand 1 without any fixed plan or any settled ideas. If it has, no, public pronouncement has been made, and silence is hot conducive to a satisfactory settlement of go vast a, problem. It is urgently necessary that the Government should be able to obtain without delay the experiences and views of every section of the community. So far the Government has not taken either the representatives of Labour or the employers into its confidence/ and it would seem that the advice of both,is not only desirable but necessary for the smooth working of any plans. The questions involved are very extensive and varied 1, for demobilisation will .carry with it matters affecting the training of apprentices whose apprenticeship was interrupted by military service, the settlement in industry of partially-disabled men, and, in > general, the reconversion of -industries to the purposes of peace. These are not political problems, but will become such if there is no other body but the State to deal ' with them. It is surely desirable that they should be treated quite apart from politics, and the plan of utilising Industrial Councils as advisory committees, as will be done in England, might be tried in New Zealand. lJut first of all we must have the Industrial Councils. ■ They are not in sight at present. The British Ministry bf Labour, in the pamphlet referred to, put it this way, and the remark is very applicable to the subject discussed in this paragraph: "Industrial Councils will make unnecessary a large amount of 'Government interference,' which is at present unavoidable, and substitute in a real measure, 'self-government' in industry.* 1 New Zealand wants a measure of self-government in demobilisation and repatriation.
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Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 36, 10 August 1918, Page 12
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314DEMOBILISATION AND REPATRIATION. Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 36, 10 August 1918, Page 12
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