THE OTAGO Thursday, December 17, 1942. REHABILITATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25101, 17 December 1942, Page 4

THE OTAGO Thursday, December 17, 1942. REHABILITATION

The country has not in recent months heard so much of Mr Semple as it formerly did. While he has not been under a cloud, he hod faded to a certain extent out of the public eye. It almost seemed as if he had been bereft of some of the verve he used to exhibit. There is evidence now, however, that he is recovering his form, if he had actually lost some of it. He is boldly reasserting himself. He was talking on the West Coast at the last week-end with all his old boastfulness. In his resumption of the office of Minister of Public Works, with which is bracketed in his person the office of Minister of Rehabilitation, he perceives a golden opportunity for carrying into effect a policy of post-war reconstruction that will ensure that the members of the armed forces shall, on demobilisation, have no cause to complain of ingratitude on the part of the people of New Zealand. And he has been making loud promises of what is to be done for them. It is he himself personally, not the Government, that is to undertake the responsibility of seeing that they shall “find a place in the great scheme of things and look upon the earth with dignity and security.” Thus, “ I propose,” Mr Semple says, “to make full provision for our boys.” He has, in fact, daringly vowed a vow to this effect. “ I make a vow,” he solemnly proclaims, “ that these boys have to be protected and rewarded for their great sacrifices and courage and blood spilled to save civilisation.” Further, warming to his subject, Mr Semple declares that he “will startle this country in making full provision.” It is somewhat of an anti-climax that this “full provision,” so far as Mr Semple indicates the nature of it, will consist of the construction of homes for the servicemen and the development of rural land so that it may be ready for cultivation as soon as it is occupied. This is hardly startling, nor will the public be greatly excited over the means that are to be adopted by Mr Semple to make land ready for use by soldiers. “I am going,” Mr Semple says, “to put bulldozers and angle dozers on the land so that they can earn an income as soon as they step on that land.” But while the soldiers may all want homes when they return they will not all desire to becbme farmers. Still, all that the Minister has said on the subject is admirable reading, not only because it shows that he retains his faculty of florid speech, but also because, taken in association with the public statements made by the chairman of the Rehabilitation Board concerning the plans for the reinstatement of members of the forces in industrial life, it promises that an earnest effort will be made to secure that the process of rehabilitation shall be effected as smoothly, as satisfactorily, and as expeditiously as will be possible. There will be such general approval of a policy that will achieve this purpose that Mr Semple’s dire threat that “anyone who gets In the road will get a bulldozer over him ” should prove to be very empty.