SOLDIER PATIENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18532, 17 October 1923, Page 11

SOLDIER PATIENTS.

TRAVELLING WARRANTS.

MATTER, OF DISCRIMINATION

REPLY TO COMMISSIONER.

Discussing the reply of Mr. G. i ache, commissioner of pensions, to the remarks made at the last meeting of the. Returned Soldiers' Association, in regard to the withholding of a first-class travelling warrant' from a disabled soldier who had to come from the North for treatment, it is re-asserted by a spokesman for the association that a change has been mado in the policy of the Pensions Department. In support of this the correspondence that passed between a Kaikohe soldier who lost a leg, and the registrar at Auckland is quoted. The soldier found it necessary to come to Auckland in connection with repairs to his artificial limb, and applied for travelling warrants for train and boat, in the ordinary way. Secondclass tickets were sent. He returned them, saving that obviously an error had been made, as first-class tickets had been sent on former occasions when he had had to trayel as a disabled soldier requiring treatment.. .The tickets were returned with a letter stating that the regulations did not permit of first-class or saloon fares being 'granted, except to. those former members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force who had held the rank of staffsergeant, or higher. The soldier declined to use the tickets upon principle, and paid his own fare. He explained that he had always received first-class tickets without any question being raised as to rank —he had held the rank of sergeant— stated that the new attitude was one that re quired explanation. • It was stated by the representative of the Returned Soldiers' Association that all soldiers who had lost a leg were automatically entitled to first-class railway accommodation at second-class rates for ordinary travelling, and it therefore appeared that in the case quoted the Tensions Department was quite out of court so far as the railway portion of the journey was concerned. In regad to the portion by boat, there was much greater reason for the issue of a saloon ticket, seeing that second-class accommodation on a coastal boat was entirely unsuitable for a man suffering To serious an injury. " Whatever the regulations may have been before the Pensions Department took over from the Defence Department," he said, "' there have been no complaints until now. Country residents coming to the city for treatment or repairs to their artificial equipment have travelled first-class without reference to military rank, and if these discriminating regulations are now to be enforced, it is plain that returned soldiers will have to fight for their removal.

"No matter how liberal the Pensions Department may decide to be in the issue of travelling warrants, the mere fact that there is power to discriminate between men up to the rank of sergeant and those above it is an offenec to all fighting men. A disabled soldier is a disabled soldier, whether he was a private or a general, and it is hardly in keeping with the spirit displayed on the home front during the war, that the better travelling comfort*, such as they are in New Zealand, should bo withheld from the lower ranks when the patching up of their bodies or their artificial limbs has to be continued. The whole thing is foreign to the spirit of the New Zealand forces and. I am certain, not the wish of the people of New Zealand."