WAR ALLOWANCES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12720, 15 August 1919, Page 3

WAR ALLOWANCES.

QUESTION OF RESTROSPECTIVE GRANTS. [Pbr Prhss Association.] WELLINGTON. August 14. The following is the text of a statement sent by Mr D. Seymour, general secretary of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers’ Association, to Sir James Allen:— “I Q compliance with our promise to submit those items in respect of which this association feels justified in insisting upon the retrospective application of the amended scales. I am instructed by my executive to press for the immediate settlement of the following items:— “ (a) Retrospective application (in full) to children of the amended scale of allowances which came into force on January 1, 1918. N.B.—lt is understood by the association that you are willing to date the payment of the wife’s allowance back to the date of the soldier’s entering camp. In this matter the association is prepared to urge these payments only m respect of those who finally left on sendee overseas. “ (b) Retrospective application of the amended scale of allowances for widowed mothers and dependents at present in force. “ (c) Payment of one shilling per day unpaid during the first two vears of the war for the probationary period of one month after entering camp. “ While I am instructed (following your request) to press these three insistent claims as matters of urgency, my executive directs me to do so without prejudice to the following matters, in respect of which, we affirm, the retrospective principle is equally sound, but upon which in the meanwhile action has been suspended pending further consideration:—Officers’ pay, soldiers’ financial assistance, out-patients’ ration allowance, and retrospective application of amendments in the scale of Pay and allowances to members of the Motor Boat Patrol and to New Zealanders who enlisted in other units than the N.Z.E.F.

"You will appreciate the fact that, not bemg in possession of a schedule embracing all the amendments during the course of the war to the scales of pay and allowances, etc!, my executive is able to refer only to those amended scales of which it is cognisant. If you would kindly make such a statement available, it would be greatly appreciated by the association- I have been definitely instructed not to press for retrospection in respect of mufti allowance or to the amended scale of fiancees’ passage money. We base our claim for retrospection on simple justice for those who obeyed the country’s first call and neither waited to dictate their terms nor state their price. The fact that these men thought their duty to the State in our hour of need greater than their duty to stay at home with their wives and children should not he held against them as a penalty, and favour should not thus he shown to their fortunate brothers who waited until the. Government passed their more beneficent legislation, THE COUNTRY’S DEBT. “We are told by you, sir, that it is only fair to assume that married men with families who volunteered in the early stages of the war were in a position to make provision for their dependents. What evidence is there for assuming that that is the case? We do not believe the number of those who wont in early reinforcements in this happy position would be greater than those who went in the closing stages. Yet provision was made for the latter irrespective of their financial position. It is fair to assume that those who went first gave the greater and longel* service, and suffered proportionately more hardships, than the'later lots. la it a sound principle of justice that the greater the service the leas the reward f Is the burden of war, already disproportionately heavy On the soldier who fought, to be intensified on those who obeyed the first call? We therefore claim that every principle of honour and right demand that a rich and prosperous country should treat the soldiers wlm first stbod by her with the same justice as those who followed. Lana values alone are said to have risen some 20 per cent on account of our winning the war—an amount probably sufficient to pay the whole war cost. Are the officers and men by whose sacrifices alone such unearned increment was crentea not to receive as much for their hardships of 1916 as the latter part of 1918 ? Are those who performed the impossible on Gallipoli and who fell in hundreds at Quinn’s and Courtenay’s Post?, pr up the slopes of Chanuk Bair those who carried Messines, who held the line round Ypres through that terrible 1916-17 winter and fell before the wire in the slaughter of Passchendale—are they not as worthy of the country’s monetary _ gratitude as those who marched with us to the Rhine? Wo claim that these are honourable and just debts incurred bv a rich and prosperous country towards the dependents of those who, by their valour and sufhave saved her the humiliation and ruination of defeat, and should be at once honoured.”