RETURNED SOLDIERS' GRIEVANCES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3414, 20 August 1919, Page 41

RETURNED SOLDIERS' GRIEVANCES.

CONFERENCE WITH MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT. MANY MATTERS DISCUSSED. 0 The executive of the Returned Soldiers' Association on Friday met local members of Parliament for the purpose of discussing matters of interest to returned soldiers. Mr J. H. Moir (vice-president of the association} occupied the chair. The members of Parliament present wero the Hon. J. MacGregor, M.L.C., aid Messrs Downie Stewart, C. E. Statham, A. Walker and J. M. Dickson, M.P.'s. Mr R. T. Sadd (Commissioner of Crown Lands) was also present The Chairman said he hoped they would be able to impress on the members the reasonableness of many of the grievances they wished to have redressed. Tney hoped to have the assistance of members in securing that redress. A NUMBER- OF SUGGESTIONS. Mr MacManus stressed the point that the billet? previously held by soldiers, which had been filled in the interval of the war by women, should be given back to the men on their return from the front. The speaker referred to the desires of the association in regard to the sustenance allowance, and said he considered that the maximum amount of a business loan should be raised to £SOO, instead of £3OO as at present, with £IOO free of interest; that houses should be erected by the Government for -returned soldiers; that the maximum, furniture loan should be raised to £75 free of interest; that widowed mothers should be eligible under the Repatriation Act; that one Minister shoidd be appointed solely to control tho Reconstruction and Repatriation Department, with a board of four; and that an epprentice returning from the front should be placed in as good a position as if he had never gone to the war. WOODSIDE HOSPITAL. Sergeant Meltzer said he was one of five specialists working at the Woodside liospital. In England they held the rank of temporary sergeants, but on return to New Zealand they reverted to the ranks Colonel Pickerill had made repeated recommendations on their behalf without success. The speaker read credentials showing the high elites of work these trained specialists were engaged on. The wages paid to them was practically 5s each per day, with separa- • tion allowance. They had not been aware that they could be retained for 12 months after the declaration of peace. They were subsequently offered 15s Id per day for a sergeant and 15s lid for a staff sergeant, and they had to pay their own board. If they had signed on with the N.Z.A.M.U they had to serve at least 12 months. Most of them were making a sacrifice by remaining in this work, but they thought they owed it to Colonel Pickerill and tho patients to carry on. They were still receiving privates' pay. They had declined to attest under the new conditions. They had asked that they should be given the rank of staff-sergeant with an additional 10s per dav. Their wages would then be roughly ,22s'per day. They were now in fact receiving less than when they were in Sidcup Hospital. , . Mr Laing said these men were all highly trained men.' They had been trained at Sidcup under Colonel Pickerill, and if their services were lost the returned soldiers would suffer. The sum expended to make up the extra amount they desired would not amount to a great sum in the total. They had all private businesses to attend io. The work they did was certainly equivalent to the pay they asked for. To Mr Statham: There were. only five men affected. They had all enlisted in New Zealasd. There was only one jaw hospital in New Zealand. The vocations of the five men when engaged in their ordinary occupations were as follow:—one importer, an accountant, an artist, a dental mechanic, and an engineer. There were from 70 to 80 cases at the hospital. They could not work with a smaller staff than five. PENSIONS. Mr Laing spoke on the question of pensions. They maintained that £2 per week for a disabled man was too low. There was also provision for an extra £1 and £1 a week for an attendant. This meant £4 per week, but a man had to be totally disabled to secure this amount. The point was that at the outset, when these men wore discharged they received only £2 per week. The department did not take it on itself to notify these men that they should get a supplementary £l. They had to find it out themselves. He thought a single man should get at least £3 15s a week. He pointed out that if a man died after seven years as a result of a war disability his dependents received no pension. They asked that the seven years' restriction should be removed. They also asked that a Pensions Appeal Board should be set up, as' great dissatisfaction was _ evident in regard to tho granting of pensions. The Pensions Board did not consider a pre-war disability at all. It held that such a disability could not be laid to war service, although it might have been accentuated by that service. They had also asked that permanently disabled men should be granted £2O a year extra. The Mayor had been asked to give these men free passes on the trams, as was done in Wellington, and they had received a favourable reception. The men who lived outside of towns, however, could not travel in trams, and they had asked for a sum of IPs a week for them. PARTIALLY DISABLED SOLDIERS. Mr Woods said the unskilled man was not reoeiving a fair deal. An unskilled man who had suffered a partial disability should be considered, and paid a sliding scale of pensions. They contended that the Government should consider the question of pensions to men who had reached tho age of 50 years. The facially disfigured men should also receive sympathetic consideration from the Government. He referred to the case of a man _ who took an hour to have his meal, as his face was so badly disfigured, and he received only £2 per week. RETROSPECTIVE ALLOWANCES. The Chairman said there was no question on which there was greater unanimity than that, of retrospective allowances. He compared tho difference between the retrospective allowances granted to the earlier men who volunteered with those who were called up under tho bailot. They asked that the earlier volunteers should receive similar

treatment to that accorded to those of the later drafts. The Government told them that the men who went out earher were better able to go at the lesser pay than those of the later drafts. Such an argument was absurd. The Government could make these later soldier allowances for their wives and children, and make them grants under the Financial Assistance Board, and yet it gave the men in the earlier drafts nothing at all. They found that the men whoso sense of duty had sent them to the front early had thus been penalised. As regards the Expeditionary Force scholarships, he felt very -aggrieved that so many hundreds of men who went away up to the Twentieth Reinforcements had been, debarred from benefiting b3' these scholarships. It appeared that those men who were in England at the time of the armistice were the only -men who were to benefit by these scholarships. Opportunity should be given to those men who had returned to. New Zealand to obtain scholarships in New Zealand similar to the scholarships which had been awarded in England. Mr O. R. M'Lean said they knew that a great many of those who went in the early drafts were in no better position than the balloted men who went - afterwards. The Government was prepared to pay the allowance from the time a man went into camp, but it refused to pay for the children. The association maintained that a widowed mother had as perfect a right to the 3s a day as a wife. This allowance should be made retrospective from the time a soldier went into camp,, and not from the date the application for it was made. The association asked that the pay of soldiers who went into camp should be 5s per day, instead of deducting Is a day for the first month. The retrospective payment was a dobt the country owed to the men. It should be paid, and they intended that it should be paid. LAND AND RAILWAY RESTRICTIONS. Mr R. P. Jones said he believed Mr Sadd was doing his best fox the returned soldiers. They suggested that it might be possible for the Government to take action whereby all idle lands which were not brought under cultivation for, say, 10 years should revert to the Grown and be given to the soldiersettlers. They also thought there should be a total remission of rent for the first two years. A man got £750 to stock his farm. He was.- allowed to spend £250 to e*act buildings a sum quite insufficient to put up a house. They had asked the Minister to increase the £250 to £4OO, but the Hon. Mr Guthrie could not see his way to accede to their request. At the present time a soldier could not get an advance, unless he had. a freehold or Crown lease,- for the purchase of implements. -He thought 400 men could be put on the Taieri, where under intense cultivation they could help materially Mosgiel and Dunedin. They advocated State sawmills and light railway systems. They believed that country would thus be opened ud which was at present of no great value. Mr MacMahus detailed the policy under which the control of the land was to be taken out of the Land Purchase Commissioners and also Land Boards. He thought it should be handed over to a Land Repatriation Committee. The Land Purchase Commissioners and the Land Boards were set up to deal .with normal times. _ These were abnormal times. The two bodies he referred to were unable to deal as expeditiously as was desired with the settlement of soldiers. In Queensland they had granted a remission of rent for three years, and no payment of principal was asked for in the first seven years. There was no reason, now that the war was over, why roads should not be pushed on in unroaded localities. The speaker referred to the losses of sheep through snow on some of the Benmore runs, and said that something could be done for these soldier settlers to put them on the same footing as other settlers. In reply to Mr "Walker, the Chairman said no price had been asked, for the land at Mosgiel referred to by Mr Jones, the property of thee Church Board. The Land Purchase Board had valued this property, but they could not say that its price would be accepted. Mr MacManus said that in Queensland the bush on State lands had been out by the State and the revenue received enabled them the better to put the soldiers on the land. REMISSION OF FINES. Mr Laing said he knew a man who obtained a remission of fines totalling £143. Such a man could have been of very little use as a soldier. In England an order was published whereby a man could secure a remission of fines by good conduct. His idea was that the only cases which could be dealt with under the proposal by General Richardson were those where fines had been imposed for trivial breaches. It was quite reasonable to give such men back their fines. He did not Slink many of the remissions should be made without olose investigation. The Chairman said under military law and conditions acts were called offences which under ordinary circumstanoes were only trivial matters. They certainly must not concludo that a soldier who had entries on his orimes sheet was a man of bad character. They had to thank General Richardson for the Remission Board, but they thought the remissions should be thoroughly inquired into before fines were remitted altogether. HOUSING QUESTION. Mr M'Crae said he thought they must look on the provision of houses as part of their repatriation scheme. He thought the spirit of the legislation was in the direction of enabling soldiers to get houses of their own. It was absolutely necessary that men coming back with wives should be provided with houses. It was quite impossible for a number of these men to get homes, in the first place, or raise the necessary purchase money. The association was of opinion that the two guineas valuation fee required by the Land Board should not be charged. It considered it should bo done by the Government valuers without charge. The soldier then had to put down £SO or £lOG_ in addition to the money advanced by the Government. There was then the stamp duty —£1 per £IOO. The association thought they Ought to waive the stamp duty in the case of soldiers. These charges were all a burden on men who had not the money to pay it. The Land Board engaged the Crown Solicitor, and there was a charge of two guineas here. Mr Sadd : It is not the Land Board which engages him. Continuing, Mr M'Crae said the-y saw no reason why a man should not get the full value put on a house instead of having to borrow £SO or so to bring up the total amount. lie thought it was the intention of the Government to enable them to get a house without any such restrictions. He did not know of one house being built by the Government f' soldiers. With the high cost, he did no think anyone but the Gov-

ernment could tackle the scheme. In Great Britain they were building houses for people generally and the soldiers, and 25 per cent, of the total cost was taken off before the house was handed over. The United States Government had gone in for a comprehensive scheme of building, and the association thought it would be a good scheme to adopt for New Zealand. There was something in. the contention that the 25 per cent, remission obtaining in Great Britain was not fair to the rest of the community, but they must remember that the advanced cost had been incurred while the men were fighting at the front. He thought the Government should introduce a comprehensive Jiuiiding scheme for the soldiers. COMMISSIONS IN NEW ZEALAND FORCES. Lieutenant-colonel Colquhoun said he considered -hat in the reconstruction scheme Territorial officers who served with tho forces should havoequal opportunity of filling the high military positions on the permanent staff. They believed that a defence scheme was necessary, and that for efficient administration the first thing would be to select officers who had done good service, irrespective of whether they were Territorial officers or staff officers. During the past few months there had been wholesale promotions of Staff Corps officers, and now only the cn.mbs would be left for the Territorial officers. No matter what rank a Territorial officer reached on the field, he was practically debarred from securing a highei* rank than lieutenant in the permanent staff. The conditions laid down were certainly an injustice to the Territorial officers who had served with distinction on active service. Mr Stewart: Prohibitive. The conditions, said the speaker, were practically prohibitive against senior officers in the Territorials being able to get anything like the rank they, held on active service. The Staff Corps promotions meant that only tho junior positions were ' left to be filled. Any officer outside the permanent force who desired to go in for. a commission had to throw up his position and go into cairn) for three months. Mr Sta'tham: Without pay? The speaker said there was no mention of pay. The association maintained that a bit of fresh blood introduced into the permanent staff would be of benefit. WAR GRATUITIES. Mr M'Crae said that in the matter of war fratuities the association asked that New ealand men should be paid the same war gratuity as had been in the other dominions. ANZAO. The Chairman spoke of Anzao Day. That was the day when tho New Zealand soldiers as. a body really entered into tho big war. All business houses and every other kind of industry should close on that day, April 25, and tins day should bo treated as a holy day throughout the dominion. He hoped the Government would take steps to have the day commemorated on the lines he had suggested. MEMBERS' REPLIES. The Hon. J. MacGregor said he had been amazed at the multitude of problems which had been raised, and he was also amazed at the manner in which Sir James Allen had dealt with them, to so very large an extent so efficiently. Evidently there was a great deal to do, but a great deal _ had been done —far more than he had imagined. He considered that the specialists connected with the Woodside Hospital had made out a clear case. The other cases might be equally clear, but they required further consideration. Mr J. M. Dickson said he was very much in sympathy with the returned soldiers, and ho would be only too pleased to assist them in any way possible. He had .held all along that when tho allowances were made they should be made retrospective to treat all tho men fairly. The land question was one that would have to be looked into. The system at the present time was somewhat crude, and the whole thing would no doubt be opened up. Mr C. E. Statham said he felt the evening had been a most profitable one. His attitude had always been that the attitude of the State to the returned soldiers should be that each individual case should be treated as a father would deal with his own son. They must try to make up to the disabled men for what they had lost. He certainly thought the widows and mothers of soldiers who had fallen should receive fair treatment. He had voted in favour of one Minister to have charge of the Repatriation Department. One of the greatest problems they had to face was to bridge the interval of apprenticeship of a youth wh.ile he was away on service. He had always, considered it an iniquitous thing to pass a man as fit and then on his return tell him he was suffering from some pre-war disability. The Government was responsible, and should not throw it back on such a soldier that he was Buttering from a physical disability before he wont away. A widowed mother should receive her full allowance. He did not think it was right to pay it only from the date application was made. As regards the housing problem they did not want to have soldier settlements—a soldier should have his residence wherever he desired it to be built. He was m entire sympathy with the chairman in his remarks on Anzac Day. , , Mr Downie Stewart said he attached great importance to the question of having a single Minister in charge of repatriation. Then thev could get a proper organisation set up. ' Some means would have to .be found to get over the undoubted hardship* that' existed at present, where men were turned down by the Pensions Board which was no doubt acting conscientiously, but erroneously. A new Land Department to deal with applications for land seemed to him to require very grave consideration. The Woodside claim was obviously a just one, and it would be a pity if anything ra to be placed in the way of the magnificent work which Colonel Pickerill was doing for the soldiers in New Zealand. _ Mr A. Walker said he was entirely in accord with the opinions expressed regarding the Woodside claims. It was impossible to conceive that the claims had not been granted by the department. He thought a widowed 'mother who had lost her son at the war was entitled to as much as a wife of a dead soldier. The housing problem was a universal cue. He thought the incidental charges should be cancelled, and that a greater amount should be allowed! for building purposes, seeing tho high cost of labour and material. These incidental charges could bo well rcmov; - ; in the interest of tho workers as well. Tho complaint regarding commissions had his entire sympathy. The speaker related how the Minister of Defence had been forced to increase the retrospective children's allow | ances from. 6d to Gd, to Is, and to la 6d. He a*id the argument of Sir James

Allen when the first advance was proposed was particularly weak, and not in harmony in his opinion with such a high position as that held by Sir James Allen. He believed in the retrospective payment referred to by one of the speakers being increased -from 4s to ss. Mr Sadd gave some interesting details of the work of his department. Jde spoke of the country lying idle, as referred to by Guptain Jones, and said there were soma 10,000,000 acres let for lid per acre. It waa let 20 years ago, and the Government was only too pleased to get it taken up at a peppercorn rental. Tho Longslip run wad one which had been let at a small rental. It had been renewed since he (the speaker) came to Otago at £l5O per annum. There was a run of several thousand acres ai> Skippers, but it ran up to 6000 ft to BQOOfti above sea level, and only a small number of sheep could bo grazed on the land. la some instances the rent of leases had been remitted for the first one or two years. It had been done at Benmore. He thought it would be a good idea if the first two years' rent was not paid then, but spread over the next 10 years, when tho settler would be {jetting on. The great trouble ii» Otago as regards the amount allowed a, soldier-settler by the Government. was that! everyone wanted a sheep run, which was, the most expensive class of farming to go into. On Gladbrook, for instance, a man on the smaller runs wanted at least another £750 to make a fair start, and on the large? runs £ISOO to £2OOO. As regards the development at tho Taieri, he thought they were doing a good bit. They had »ecured Kirk's property and Gawn's, and then thera was the Presbyterian Church property. There was the \Vestcott property at Dumbarton. Only three or four allotments had • been taken up, and now the- RepatriationDepartment had got authority to make iM into a seed-growing settlement. The speakeß said the board was doing its best to deal immediately with applications by soldiers, lie guaranteed that if Clifton Station was opened to the public that day, it would speedily be taken up. One of the soldiers there had obtainocL £330 for hi* wool and lambs off 240 acres, and had £2OO to come in for chaff. . Another soldier had sold 60 acres of "turnips at £lO per acre. Tho oats were a bettet! sample than those grown at the Taieri. The first man had not had muoh experience of farming; but the second njan was; an experienced farmer. As regards Benmore, one of the soldiers had abandoned'his section. There was a crop of oats of 40 acres, and the' chaff was sold at £8 per ton. There was a local market there, and the soldier farmers could sell every bit of; chaff at top prices. The sheep were not' lost in the snow there. They were . lostf after the snow, because the farmers, either through inexperience or negligence, had nor thing to feed them on. As regards making a "community" woolshed, they were not in favour of this idea, and would not agree! to it. As regards repayments of loans, ho might say there had been no repayment of loans up till now except in one instance, where a Gladbrook man, who had dono well out of his orop, immediately began to pay off his loan. All his board asked wa« 12| per cent, payment annually on the loan; to the soldier.

The meeting, which commenced at 7.30, ended at five minutes past 11. .