SOLDIERS' GRATUITY.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 October 1919, Page 5

SOLDIERS' GRATUITY.

PAYMENT TO HOSPITAL CASES. MATTER BEING CONSIDERED. (By Wire.—Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Last Night. The question of the payment of the gratuity in respect of the time spent by returned soldiers in New Zealand hospitals was raised again in the House to-night. The Hon. G. W. Russell asked the Minister of Defence whether men not yet discharged, who were being treated as out-patients of hospitals, would be entitled to gratuity for the period when receiving this treatment, as in-patients in hospitals were now entitled to it.

Sir James Allen said that no provision was made for the reckoning of inpatients' or out-patients' time spent in New Zealand hospitals, nor for the payment of the gratuity up till the time 'of discharge. Such provision couid not have been made, because the period would in every case have been an unknown quantity. There 'was very considerable difficulty about the cases of those men who had returned sick and wounded. As honorable members knew, there was provision for a minimum gratuity to meet the cases of such men, the minimum period of service being assumed to he eighteen months. Enquiries were being made regarding men in hospitals in A T ew Zealand to see whether it would not be possible to adopt some general principle. He feared that, so far as outpatients were concerned, the Government would not be able to do more than what was already provided in the eighteen months' minimum, because there were men who had been out of hospital and who had returned to hospital again, and sometimes the second course of treatment was rendered necessary by indiscretions of the men themselves. These men could not be provided for except in respect of the period for which they were in hospital originally, and this the