REGRETTABLE FRICTION.

Southland Times, Issue 17790, 16 October 1917, Page 4

REGRETTABLE FRICTION.

It is rather an unfortunate thing that friction should have occurred between the Returned Soldiers’ Association and the Second Division League. It is unfortunate for two reasons. In the firjst place the two bodies are not in any sense antagonistic but ought both to be working towards the same ends, since in all probability many men who are now members of the Second Division League will in due course qualify for membership of the Returned Soldiers’ Association. In the next place the rupture is unfortunate because in any controversy with the Returned Soldiers’ Association members of the Second Division League must necessarily be at a disadvantage from the outset. As the two bodies now stand the Returned Soldiers have done all the fighting and none of the talking, while the members of the Second Division League have done all the talking and none of the fighting. Apart from the merits of the question at issue the sympathy of a very large section of the public will naturally go to the men who have fought in the country’s wars as against those who have not yet heard a shot fired in anger. Furthermore, we think the Second Division League has prejudiced its position somewhat. by professing too much sympathy for members of the ''First Division. The Second Division League came into existence only when the calling up of the Second Division was imminent. It is impossible for any candid obeerver to believe that the Second Division League would ever have been formed had the First Division been large enough to supply all the men required for the forces. It is quite true that members of the First Division will benefit from the success which -the Second Division League has achieved, but members of the Second Division League were working for their own interests primarily and should never have obtruded a claim to solicitude for the First Division. Then again too much has been heard of the sacrifices that will be entailed on the Second Division; The sacrifices in the Second Division are greater only because they involve wives and children. So far as Ihe man himself is concerned they are no greater; in fact they are',not so great." The married man has had a longer run in life. He has established his home. He has left behind him those who will cany on his name, and if he goes under bis personal loss is less and the loss to the country is less than in the case of the young stripling who has all his life before him, who would have established a home in the course of a few years and reared a family and served the State in the status of full citizenship. It is not to be supposed that the single men who rushed to the colours when they were first unfurled have made no sacrifices. None have made greater, and if it comes to that, have those who have fallen not left behind them grieving mothers and sorrow-stricken women who would have been happy wives if they had re-,

turned? But if the case for the Second Division League could have been handled with greater discretion there is no question but that at bottom it is a good case which deserves the strongest support of the public and of the Returned Soldiers’ Association. The best evidence that the claims of the Second Division League were justified is to be found in the support accorded in Parliament to the War Pensions Amendment Bill. The provision made for wives and children in the old schedule was not adequate, and members of the Second Division, as the time approached when they would be called upon to go on active service, were fully entitled to put up the strongest fight which they were capable of for justice to their wives and families and would have fallen short of their duty had they not done so. That is the basic fact on which the Second Division League is entitled to stand, and from which neither argument nor ridicule can move it. As to the aspersions sometimes cast on the courage of members of the Second Division League we venture to think that those who utter them will yet have occasion to feel the deepest regret. Equally with the First Division the members of the Second Division are part afld parcel of the manhood of this country, which has been tested on the battlefields of Gallipoli and Flanders by the most severe ordeal. Any one who says that members of the Second Division would fight less willingly or less well than the soldiers who have made the New Zealand Division famous either does not belieVe what he says or does not know his own countrymen. These sneers are as contemptible as they are cheap, and members of the Second Division are not likelf to be greatly disturbed by them. The friction between the Returned Soldiers’ Association and the Second Division League will probably pass away. There ought to be a perfect understanding between the two bodies, and such an understanding could surely be reached if delegates from the two bodies would meet together.