A PARTY FOOTBALL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18197, 18 March 1921, Page 5

A PARTY FOOTBALL

USE OF SOLDIER’S NAME. PROTEST IN PARLIAMENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, March 17. A vigorous protest against what he stigmatised as using the soldier as a party'football was made in the House of Representatives to-night by Mr D. Jones (Kaiapoi) Ho had been speaking earlier upon what the Government had achieved in its time, including .in the category settling the soldier. “He’s well settled,’* interjected Mr G. Mitchell (Wellington South). Mr Jones took up the challenge. One of the most hateful things that he had observed in the House, he said, was this using of the soldier as the party football. Last session one of the most insistent on the policy of settling the soldier had been Mr Mitchell, who had declared in season and out of season that land must be found for the soldiers. Now, what are you doing for 1 the soldiers, he asked, addressing not Mr Mitchell, but the entire Opposition side of the House. You are damning his credit from , one end of the country to the other. You are telling the storekeepers that they must not deal with the soldier because he has no money. You are telling the stock agent that he must not deal with tho soldier because he has no money. You are damning his credit. In yearn to come, he added, one of tho things that the Government would be most thanked for was the way in which it had settled the soldiers on the land. He would quote a striking instance from Canterbury of a man who had been settled on the land for which he had paid the very highest price. That man, from 30 acres, had thrashed 101 bushels of wheat to the acre. “ I am very glad to hear it,” said Mr Mitchell. There was another striking fact to which he had not intended 'to refer, added Mr Jones. There was in New Zealand, he bad learned the other day, a sum of £150,C00 that was being lent to soldiers on note of hand, with the condition that it should be paid back just whenever possible. Not 5 per cent, of this money was being lost. It was coming back to be used again, and it spoke volumes for the honesty of purpose of the soldiers that this money was going all over New Zealand to be used for tjfteir assistance.