FAIR ALLOWANCES

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 136, 5 December 1918, Page 6

FAIR ALLOWANCES

The demand of thei Returned Soldiers' Association for retrospective allowances is certainly one that should receive the most earnest consideration of members before Parliament adjourns. The principle at issue is not how much it will cost, as certain members of the National Government appear to think, but whether the claim is just. Cabinet and members of the House, if they ask themselves this question seriously, will have, we believe, little difficulty in arriving at • a correct decision. We aro of opinion that the returned soldiers' demand should be granted, and that their dependents should receive tho amounts so long overdue to them forthwith. We do not believe in cheap labour or in cheap soldiers, and, as a perusal of our files will show, we have consistently advocated the payment of adequate soldiers' allowances and pensions since the beginning of the war. Who will say that the dependents of those soldiers who fought jn 1918 should be better treaJted than the wives and children of the men who went at the "beginning? Is it any argument that because justice was not granted in. the first place it should not be conceded now? The attainment of justice is, indeed, the principle for which the Allies have been- fighting during the last four years, and it will not be to New. Zealand's credit if sheddeniess s the ■application of it to her returned soldiers.