NEW ZEALAND'S WAR OBLIGATIONS

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 146, 18 December 1919, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND'S WAR OBLIGATIONS

FULL RESPONSIBILITY.

(FROJI ODK OWN COBRESFONSKNT.)

LONDON, 23rd October.

In the interests of New Zealand, the High Commissioner corrects some statements which had appeared in the Investors' Review on "The Criss-Cross of War Indebtedness." The .High Commissioner says that New Zealand's total war indebtedness to the Mother Country amounts 'to rather less than £30,000,000—n0t to £75,750,000, as stated

The writer of the original article presumes that the United Kingdom' is responsible for the payment of the war pensions of the .capitalised value of £12,000,000, but the High Commissioner will not allow this to pass—"This is not so—New Zealand has assumed full responsibility." On this-last point the Investors' Keview remarks:

" The inference that we are in ultimate resort responsible .for 'New Zealand's war pensions was our own, and in the' circumstances we submit it was natural enough. If it should happen that through misfortune New Zealand herself was unable to pay these pensions, surely our clear duty would be to go to help her? Gratitude for the loyal and cordial whole-souled help given to us by Australia and New Zealand in our extremity would prompt us to do that, and in any survey of the liability the war has involved, it would be imprudent not to regard the pensions bestowed upon the men from overseas who gave their all for the Old Land as peculiarly an obligation laid upon us all." • .