Policy Of R.S.A. Is Dictated By Conference

Northern Advocate, 1 December 1944, Page 5

Policy Of R.S.A. Is Dictated By Conference

(PA.) WELLINGTON, This Day. When speaking to the report of the petitions committee on tne question of the release of military defaulters, Mr. Clyde Chj-T (Govt.-Timaru) inferred that the policy of the New Zealand R.S.A. was framed by “a small executive of old men of the last-war.” “This statement is most erroneous,” states the New Zealand R.S.A. in reply, “and Mr. Carr knows, or should know, that the policy of the New Zealand R.S.A. is dictated by the Dominion conference of delegates from each of tlfe association’s 96 branches, and comprising men frbm the last and preset war. “The resolutions affecting what Mr. Carr described as ‘pronouncements allegedly made in the name of the R.S.A.’, were unanimously passed by the Dominion conference of the New Zealand R.S.A. in 1941, and have been unanimously re-affirmed at each succeeding conference. At the conference last June of delegates representing 84 associations, 20 were returned servicemen of the present war. “On the Dominion executive committee of the New Zealand R.S.A., which was entrusted with the task of implementing the decisions of the conference, four of 15 members are young returned servicemen of the present war. Despite what Mr. Carr and other individual members of the Government think of the matter, the New Zealand R.S.A. is pleased with the decision of the Petitions Committee and now urges the Government to deaL with the question of defaulters as courageously as it dealt .with other farmore contentious war problems, including compulsory national service.”