DEFAULTERS' CAMPS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 134, 4 December 1944, Page 7

DEFAULTERS' CAMPS

MINISTER ON CONDITIONS

Some remarks reported to have been made by Mr. W.*A. Mclntyre at a meeting of the Hastings Returned Services Association concerning the treatment accorded to military defaulters published on Wednesday, have been replied to by the Minister in charge of the camps (Mr. Mason). Mr Mclntyre claimed-to be in a position to know what conditions obtained in the detention camps. "Any facts which underlie the -speaker s assertions," said Mr. Mason are equally true of the ordinary civil prisons, and his central idea that they evidence a luxurious life is therefore mere hysteria. Prisoners sentenced to hard labour in our ordinary civil prisons are encouraged to study They have a regular tobacco issue, and there has been no general shortage sufficient to raise the question of reduction of prisoners' tobacco issue. Nor are inmates of civil prisons condemned to impair their eyesight by study in insufficient light. It is not a great indulgence for defaulters to have what they would have in prison "The variety of location of the camps will occasionally cause it to * happen that products are locally available and cheap which elsewhere may be scarce or dear, and economy must be guided by those local considerations "The final suggestion that the influence of a member of Parliament has resulted in a defaulter's release is without foundation in fact."