RETURNED SOLDIER SETTLERS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 88, 30 March 1926, Page 6

RETURNED SOLDIER SETTLERS.

DEPUTATION TO GOVERNMENT. PRINCIPLE OF ADVANCES EXPLAINED. Wellington, Al arch 30. A deputation from the Returned Soldiers’ Association waited on the Government to-day. Air. Perry, the spokesman, said there were cases of soldiers who had sold their farms in 1915-16 to go to the war, who, when they returned, had found their own finance To settle on the land without assistance Irom the Discharged Sokliers’ Settlement Department. Those men now required assistance to pay oil mortgages, but found they could not obtain loans from the State Advances Office. If preference could not be given To men applying to State Advances then it was asked that the Discharged Soldiers’ Settlement Act be reopened for the benefit of the men mentioned. The Hon. A. D. McLeod said that the provision that no more than £2,500 should he advanced to soldiers was found useless in practice. Only that day he had seen a man who had put £16,000 of his own money into land and there was apparently no means of saving him. None of the lending departments. even if they had the money available could save that sort of man. What was being done was to make advances where possible on stock. The Department, found that in many cases stock was free, or partially free, and where such advances were made it left a balance with which interest or liabilities could be met. The whole question of adding to the discharged soldiers’ settlement fund was a matter for the G o ver ninent.