SOCIAL MALLS FOR RETURNED SOLDIERS.

Free Lance, Volume XVI, Issue 847, 29 September 1916, Page 6

SOCIAL MALLS FOR RETURNED SOLDIERS.

The Danger of Double Banking-.

WHILST giving all credit to the New Zealand Natives' Associartion for the energy with -which its members have taken up more •than one vseful project for. the benefit of the men m training or the returned soldiers, we cannot help thinking that the Chairman and Secretary of the Wellington Returned Soldiers' Association have made out a very strong case against building the proposed Memorial. Hall m Majoribanks-street.-The scheme savours to our mind of a s costly and needless double banking. The' Returned Soldiers' Association is a well organised well-established institution, the committee of which,.both.past and present, has given excellent proof of the intelligence, patrotism, and economy witli which the work lias been and is beincr earned on. The Club, however, has'to depend very largely upon a continuance or generous support ;by the public/ and this being the case it seems to us that to establish what would pi actically be a rival institution could only mean a costly duplication of effort with no appreciable advantage +o be gained. i ■*•"''■* " * # ■'• -• I

For these, and other reasons we commend to the Committee of the New.'Zealand Natives' Association a careful consideration of the question 'whether -.it would not be better, in the interests of the returned soldiers, to .relinquish their separate ■ scheme and to devote their : most praiseworthy/ efforts and energies to assisting an institution already well established a.nd. capable, with more funds at its disposal, of doing yet more effective service for the men than even it has already accomplished. We suggest that the two bodies should eo-op-erate and unify their efforts.