WAR VETERANS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21088, 14 July 1938, Page 12

WAR VETERANS

SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION TIMARU REMITS CARRIED 8y Telegrapn—l-ress association CHRISTCHURCH, July 13. Strong opposition to a remit from Timaru that the Dominion Executive for the year should be transferred to Christchurch from Wellington was expressed at to-day's Dominion Conference of the South African War Veterans’ Association by Mr R. J. F. Aldrich, delegate from Wellington. Two or three times a week, he said, members of the Dominion Executive were engaged in interviewing members of Parliament, of the Cabinet,'or Departmental heads on matters concerning the welfare of veterans.

Colonel G. Mitchell (Wellington) appealed to delegates to deal with the remit without parochial feeling. Time and efficiency would be sacrificed if matters which could be handled personally in Wellington now had in future to be dealt with by correspondence.

On a ballot being taken, the remit, was carried by 21 votes to 19. A remit from Timaru that the capitation fee be reduced to 1/- was carried.

The state of the graves ot former members of the contingent in South Africa had been causing the committee considerable thought, the annua! report stated. Mr H. Retter, of the Auckland Association, had on a recent visit to South Africa found the grave of his brother and other members of the Seventh Contingent in a very neglected condition, and the names on a stone slab obliterated. He had succeeded in getting the grave put into a decent state of repair. The War Graves Division of the Department ot Internal Affairs was making a thorough investigation. The South Afrclan War Memorial at Napier, which was destroyed in the earthquake in 1931. would be repaired md re-erected when a new site had been found.