TRANSPORT CONDITIONS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXVIII, Issue LXXVIII, 24 July 1919, Page 5

TRANSPORT CONDITIONS

SOLDIERS ASK FOR ENQUIRY

(BY TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

AUCKLAND, July 23. A petition drawing attention *to the conditions on transports, particularly in regard to women, and to the administration of the military education scheme overseas, was signed by over 700 men who returned to New Zealand recently by the Ruahine. This has been forwarded to the Acting-Prime Minister by the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association, which has come to the conclusion that they are justified. Though not actuated hy any sense of the grievances for which they personally desired -redress, they complained, not as soldiers, hut as taxpayers and citizens who believedl that the country was not receiving a satisfactory return for Government expenditure of funds. The petitioners ask for an enquiry into the whole question of transporting troops, which would clear up the matters mentioned, besides the question of the repeated supply of stale and unwholesome stores issued to the troops; at sea. In regard to the education scheme, complaint is made that unqualified men were appointed to administer it when highly qualified te-achers in the forces were available. In consequence, it is. affirmed, the education scheme has become thoroughly discredited among the soldiers, and the attendance at classes overseas had either ceased or become ludicrously small.