SHORTENED LIVES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23809, 9 November 1940, Page 14

SHORTENED LIVES

GREAT WAR SOLDIERS STATISTICAL ANALYSIS COMPENSATING BONUS URGED The view that headquarters and nil branches of the New Zealand .Returned Soldiers' Association should unite in asking the Government for an additional lis a week cost-of-living bonus for the 70,000 ex-members of the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force who are earning less than a year is expressed by Mr. W . E. Cay ley Alexander, of Piopio, former president of the Te Kuiti and District .Returned Soldiers' Association, in a statistical review of the number of men of that force who have died in the last year. Mr. Alexander has been making statistical investigations and compiling returns annually for a number of years to show the difference between, the age at death of civilians who had no war service and the age of ex-soldiers over the same range of years. His computations are based on comparisons of returned men with other men who were of enlistment ago, 20 to 44, during tho period from i 1914 to 1918. Tho male deaths recorded in the Dominion in tho year 1939-40 totalled 3273, and of those 721 were returned soldiers, according to Mr. Alexander's statement. The average age at death of the civilians-is 57.56 years-, and that of ex-soldiers 54.6. This, continues Mr. Alexander, shows a longer life of practically three years for the non-com-batant.

Mr. Alexander has compiled a table showing tho average ages at dcatli of non-combatants and ex-soldiers over tho last five years. The difference, in favour of the non-combatant, in 1935-36 was 10.0 years. .In 1938-39 it was 5.94 years, and this year's figure is 2.96 years. "These figures prove conclusively that tho ex-soldier of 1914-18 should be entitled to apply for any social security benefit other than war pension at five years earlier than the non-combatant of tho same period," states Mr. Alexander. "It must bo remembered that the difference in ago, 26 years after the war started, of approximately three years, covers thousands of men who had either very brief service or who never heard a shot fired, as well as the warworn soldier of three or four years' strenuous active service."

A table lias also been compiled by Mr. Alexander showing that of the 77.695 members of the Expeditionary Force discharged in Nfw Zealand, 8541 have died up to and including this year, leaving 69,154 ex-soldiers presumably living in the Dominion.