SOLDIERS' LOANS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1579, 6 March 1919, Page 6

SOLDIERS' LOANS.

THE RATE OF INTEREST. FIVE PER CENT. TOO HIGH. The rate of interest to be charged returned soldiers by the Government for loans, was one of the subjects discussed at the meeting of the Canterbury Eepatriation Board last evening. The amount that the Repatriation Boards have power to authorise as advances for tools and equipment, etc., is £3oo—the endorsement of the Control Board being necessary for amounts over £so—no interest being charged on the first £SO. When the Tools and Equipment Committee presented its report to the Board last evening regarding certain advances recommended, Mr E. J. Howard asked a question as to the rate of interest to be charged, and was informed that it. was five per cent. Mr Howard said that the amount should be less. Either there should be no interest charged, or the amount should be just sufficient to cover the cost of the loan to the Government/

Mr W. E. Leadley (secretary of the Christchurch branch of the Returned Soldiers' Association) said that the soldiers ought to bo treated more generously. The members of the board were mostly business men and they were too prone to look at these questions from the business viewpoint. The Government, too, seemed to proceed in all matters affecting returned soldiers upon the basis of the question "does it pay." The moral claim of the soldiers was ignored. Did they realise that if the enemy had been victorious, the fate of New Zealand would have been the same as that of Belgium and Serbia? If the soldiers standing in the barges at Anzac Bay had looked at the matter as a business proposition and asked "would it pay" not a man would have landed. If the men in the trenches at the Somme, at Messines, at Passchendaele, had asked the question "does it payf" not a man would have gone over the top. In charging five per cent, the Government was tying a millstone around the neck of the soldiers, and they were left to fight an unequal contest with the men who had never gone away. Asked what interest should be charged, Mr Leadley replied "not more than a maximum of two per cent." Mr I'. W. Hobbs explained that as the first £SO of the loan was free, the interest on the whole sum of £3OO would only average at most four and one-sixth per cent.

The board weut into committee to consider the question. It was subsequently decided in committee that the board forward a remit to the conference of the Chairman of Boards, recommending that no interest be charged to soldiers on loans advanced up to £3OO.