MILITARY PENSIONS AND ALLOWANCES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16289, 23 January 1915, Page 8

MILITARY PENSIONS AND ALLOWANCES.

! A couple of months ago we deemed it desirable to draw attention to the inadequacy of the provision contained in the law of the dominion for the payment of . military pensions, and the importance of , the subject is such as to justify a return to it. We are hardly inclined to agree with a correspondent who has suggested ■ that a discussion of the matter is inopportune just now. The question is one that involves no considerations which should be at all embarrassing to the authorities. On the other hand, the knowledge that the pension system at present provided for is seriously deficient is disquieting in its effect upon the section of the community which the war is most closely touching—namely, those who have gone, are going, or are thinking of going to the front, and l their relations and dependents. The least the country can do in return for the sacrifices that so many of its people are making in tho cause of loyalty to the Empire is to remove as much as it can of the apprehension that must fill many minds as to how the burden is to be borne which the war may impose if the bread-winner of a home should lose his life or return incapacitated as a worker, or if the strong and healthy youth should return to his friends a physical wreck, his best powers spent in the service of his country. Provision has been made in the Old Country to increase the military pensions and allowances payable under certain conditions, and the dominions must also take up this question more seriously than they have had previous occasion to do. In New Zealand the pension scale at present in existence is Teally a relic of the Maori wars, representing, with a few modifications, that enacted nearly fifty years ago for application to the case of the dependents of members of the colonial forces serving in those troublous times. The provisions of the old Act were so extended as to be applicable to members of New Zealand contingents serving in the South African war. It is impossible for anyone to study the scale of pensions and allowances without coming to the conclusion that the provision made for those incapacitated by wounds and for dependents of them and of those who may be killed is in many , cases wholly inadequate. Apart from the pensions provided for the widows of men who have been killed in action or | have died of wounds or of illness, and £ from the allowances payable in respect to ( the children in such cases, there is the t question of the pensions for men who f have been incapacitated temporarily or c permanently through injuries received in r the performance of military duties. In the c latter case the provision appears to be s particularly inadequate, and when it is s

considered in the light of the fact that no provision seems to exist for the maintenance of the dependents of incapacitated men its claim to sufficiency is by no means improved. Unquestionably there is room for great improvement in

the provision made for pensions and allowances payable in respect to private soldiers who may lose their lives or be incapacitated as the Tesult of the war. The Government has, we feel sure, been impressed with a sense of the inadequacy of the existing provisions. It is, according to a statement which has been credited to the Minister of Defence, awaiting the result of communications as to the proposals of the commonwealth Government in a similar direction. It may be that the New Zealand Government can most advantageously act in co-operation and uniformity with the Federal Government in such a matter, especially as whatever is done will Tequire legislative enactment, and so cannot receive effect, until Parliament is in session. There is, howeveT, no apparent reason why the Government, once it has made up its mind respecting the proposals it will bring down, should not make its intentions known to the public.