SOLDIER SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20391, 21 October 1929, Page 10

SOLDIER SETTLEMENT.

During a discussion of soldier settlement, the Minister of Lands told the House of Representatives that the total amount written off in regard to advances made to returned soldiers was more than £6,680,000. This would have been a heavy sum even had it been inevitable in any scheme for establishing the men as farmers: how much of it was due to a policy wrongly conceived and executed has been one of the most controversial political questions of the post-war years. There is no great profit in pursuing it now. The main point is that the lesson contained in that episode of New Zealand's history should not be forgotten, that enthusiasm for settlement should be subordinated to a stern regard for sound methods. Meanwhile there is encouragement to believe, from this year's departmental reports, that the process of writing off has gone far toward producing the effect for which it was designed. In the statement from the Dominion Revaluation Board, and in the reports of the various commissioners of Crown lands, it is repeated again and again that a state of stability is being reached, that the majority of the men on their holdings can now look forward to the future with reasonable confidence. As a special indication, there are many statements that advances on current account — that is loans intended to be temporary, and secured by chattels mortgages over stock or plant—are being transferred to the mortgage indebtedness secured on the land itself. The result is that repayment is on the same basis as the permanent advance, by instalments over a long term of years. There is a saving in interest, the stock is freed from an encumbrance and may be handled by the settler as he sees fit. and the obligations on hiin ivre completely systematised. This in itself IB strong evidence of greater stability. The hopeful possibility is that this difficult question of the soldier settler is approaching its final settlement. What is more important in every way is the justification for hoping that the great proportion of the men still on their holdings are making progress toward success and eventual prosperity. The country will contemplate that outcome with' unalloyed pleasure, as a return for the heavy amount written off in reaching it.