THE RETURNED SOLDIERS' ASSOCIATION.

Observer, Volume XLI, Issue 13, 27 November 1920, Page 20

THE RETURNED SOLDIERS' ASSOCIATION.

Executive Team. ("\TJR executive team, Avhich has been under strength for some time, is now restored to full numbers. Out of 14 candidates, the largest number ever received, Messrs. Lee, Cox, Hogan, Postlewaite, and Armstrong, were elected at the last general meeting, It is surely a good sign of life to see so many candidates for office. Pessimists have been lamenting over what they believed to be the beginning of the end of the Association, but writer has all along felt that the pessimism was not justified. What the Association was suffering from was the want of a home. The office in Victoria Street was not a home. Members called there only for business purposes. There was no social life. and no facilities for getting together. We were like a watch without a main spring. • » * The New Club. The new Club has supplied the main spring. Though it is not an Association institution, renewed life in the Association is already noticeable. The reason is that members have a rallying point. Not only are members taking a fresh interest in their own affairs, but new members are joining up. New Zealanders who have not joined up may be interested to learn that among the new members are quite a number of Australians. It is up to our own to take a lead from these Australians. Our brothers from the Other Side believe in sticking together. Throughout the war they were famed for it. Those of them who have come to New Zealand show that they have not forgotten the old habit. They know that wherever returned men are they must be organised and stick together, otherwise the weak and the more helpless of the men will be, left to suffer as they have been-left to suffer after every war. Human nature has not been changed. Hi}man memory is no longer than it was after the Crimean War, and every other war. It is as plain as a pike-staff that the soldiers will have to fight for their rights, and as the time goes on, and more and more people forget what they owe to the soldier, the fight will become more and more severe. If the soldiers do not remain organised, then heaven help the stricken and the widows iind the orphans before long. The last session of Parliament demonstrated fairly clearly that financial considerations are already a factor in the pension policy. > a • The Monument. Members generally will support the decision of. the general meeting to expend £1,000 upon the erection of an obelisk in the soldiers' plot in the Waikumete Cemetery in memory of comrades who have died and will die in New Zealand. One imagines that the relatives of these men will appreciate a, memorial erected by the Association more than anything that is done by the citizens generally. Individually, members are not much given to sentiment, but the erection of. this obelisk is not mere sentiment. It is a permanent acknowledgment of the greatest sacrifice a man can make. It will be a reminder, and one hopes an inspiration to generations yet unborn. It will stand for all that was best, all that was noblest, in our day. • * • Clothing for Sale. During the past week the office of the A.R.S.A. has resembled the order department of a soft goods stere. The demamd for the surplus

clothing of the Defence Department has been very keen, and hundreds of men are going to make a saving through getting this clothing. The Department is to be congratulated upon disposing of its surplus stock in this way. Doubtless it would have been easier and perhaps just as profitable to have sold the clothing in one lot to a firm which could then have made a good profit.