HELPING DISABLED SOLDIERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22119, 27 May 1935, Page 8

HELPING DISABLED SOLDIERS

To judge by its first annual report, a good beginning has been made by the Soldiers' Civil Re-estab-lishment League with its task of placing disabled soldiers back in civil employment or occupation. It may seem strange that an organisation so charged should be completing its first year of work 21 years after the outbreak of war. That is no fault of the league. Delays in inaugurating an effective scheme since the case was so effectively stated by the. ExSoldiers' Rehabilitation Commission in 1930 were the fault of the Government, partly excused by its preoccupation with larger national issues and the financial stringency. The business of giving disabled men a place in the economic life of the country has not been made easier by the passage of time, and it is proof of the pathetic earnestness of the men to establish an independent footing in the workaday world that the league is able to render so encouraging a report. Its chairman states that the paramount need of the partially-disabled is not money, food or clothes, but useful work. It is to the credit of New Zealand that material needs have been filled, but. as has been discovered with the unemployed, sustenance is not enough. Work has its value in morale as well as in wages. To live fully most men like to feel they are earning their living or, in the case of the disabled, contributing as much as they are able. Otherwise, to physical disability is added mental pain and a constant restiveness unless—just as much a tragedy—the keen edge by disuse is blunted into indifference and lethargy. With the labour market overfull of the young and the lusty, the problem of placing these broken veterans is not easy, but it should be faced by all in an active spirit of duty. The league will help them to assist and to fit the man to the job.