SOLDIER SETTLEMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12251, 24 September 1925, Page 4

SOLDIER SETTLEMENT

Over the settlement of the returned soldiers on the land a great question has arisen. The last annual report of. the Dominion Board on the subject is of sufficient unbiased good sense to settle that question for ever. • The Dominion, through the Government; had made promises to the 1 soldiery volunteering in thousands to uphold our cause in the war. The Dominion was sincere, and the Government was sin* cere. Ihe responsibility for making good the promises—-which the soldiery, we say it to their credit, never asked for, or in any way suggested; they marched without conditions—rested with the Government.

-That duty, had it been possible to wait till the end of the war, would have been easier. But the men came back during the war, and of these many could not return, and for them the fulfilment of the promises was a vital thing. Many of them wanted to go on the land—a-, very manly and proper worthy of good soldiers like them. The promises implied freedom of choice. Produce boomed with war prices, land values were soaring accordingly, the honourable strength of the promises was in no way diminished—promises to men who had faced the great, sacrifice and were compelled to face the difficult task of finding a; means of livelihood to replace the means-, relinquished for the great cause. ' Waiting was impossible. ~ The fulfilment of promisp being a point of the nicest honour, the Government fulfilled with a generosity unimpaired by booming land values. That the Government did its best to get the lands for the fulfilment of the promise, in every way ac cording the light of good business principle undisturbed by any other, consideration whatever, the Board’s report has affirmed beyond any doubt. It is time for the whole Dominion to join in this affirmation. Under the circumstances, success in every case of soldier settlement was not to be expected. With the measure of failure, inevitable and (as we know now) reasonably to be expected, Government and Parliament have dealt in the spirit of the promise voluntarily made to men who went forth asking for nothing. In this spirit Government and Parliament are still acting. In the face of this conclusion there is nothing more to be said on the subject, except that attempts to make political capital out of circumstances beyond all possible control must be treated with the sternness their lack of generous horse-sense deserves.