THE LAND HUNGER

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 102, 2 May 1919, Page 3

THE LAND HUNGER

NORTHERN SOLDIERS' WANTS.

According to reports from the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association Land Bureau, a steadily increasing number of returned men are seeking to be placeon the land, and find that the Government's provision under the Discharged Soldiers Settlement-Act* does not meet their requirements in-so far as>the actual Crown or specially acquired lands now available are concerned:

The officer in charge of the bureau behoves that at the present moment there are more members of the Returned Soldiers' Association asking for land through the bureau than have been placed under tho special legislative provision during tho whole period of the war. In the absence of any Government scheme for co-operative woi'king of large ajoas specially subdivided for farming by returned soldiers and trainees, many. of the men are syndicating themselves in the hope of buying suitable blocks of land, with the help of the financial provisions of the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Act, and working them jointly. Many of the men who have been associated at the war view this as the means of cementing the camaraderie of the war. It is stated that there are no fewer than sixty syndicates already formed, each of them five to thirty men, each man holding cash ranging up to £1000.

.Meantime there is a great dearth of settlement land in Auckland, where most of that already offered has been eagerly taken up. Two new estates are shortly to be opened up for scloction by returned soldiers, and, judging by the state of affairs reported by the Returned Soldiers' Association, the sections axe likely to be taken up promptly if they are not too heavily loaded.

An important feature of a report which was recently endorsed by the'executive of the Auckland R.S.A. is in'regard to the development of Crown lands. In accordance with the terms of the report, pressure is to be brought to bear upon the Government to open up the vast tracts of undeveloped Crown lands now lying idle. The report pointed out that there was sufficient first-class land in the Urewera country to give every soldier veteran a .free grant of 300 acres. The same applied to the idle lands of the north and the King Country.