The Waipawa Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1917. CURRENT TOPICS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7917, 11 August 1917, Page 2

The Waipawa Mail. SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1917. CURRENT TOPICS.

Grants from Patriotic Funds. A considerable amount of discussion took place at the last meeting of the executive committee of the Hawke’s Bay War Relief Association on the subject-ef grants to religious organisations for the carrying on of work amongst the boys at the front. The discussion arose through an application for a grant for the Church Missionary Society, and the committee ultimately decided that it could not entertain the application. The decision is one that should meet with the approval of all who are prepared •to take a broad view of the question. The Association has made grants to the Y.M.C.A., and is justified in doing so, for the reason that this organisation is non-sectarian and devotes its energies to ministering to the material comforts of the boys in the firing line, it matters not whether they are Roman Catholics or Methodists, Presbyerians or Anglicans. We doubt not that good work is also being done by the representatives of the sectarian organisations, but if they look for support frotia the general public it must come from the individual and not from the general. » • • Blind Justice. At Christchurch the other day a bankrupt estate agent was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment for failing to account for moneys collected by him for another. Prisoner’s counsel stated that the total deficiency was £B4O, of which £522 was trust money. In sentencing the prisoner the Magistrate said it was a case in which a land agent had for two years been systematically living on trust funds, and for this he gets the extraordinarily trifling sentence of four weeks’ retirement. Has commercial morality sunk to so low an ebb that a man can rob his clients of upwards of eight hundreds of pounds and escape with a sentence that is no punishment ? A man wlio breaks his prohibition order, who creates a disturbance in a public place, or who, under the influence of liquor, commits some other trifling crime very often receives the same degree of punishment as this man who, with calculated hisdonesty, deliberately set out to manipulate trust funds and rob his clients. And this is what is called justice.

War Pensions. The War Pensions Amendment Act of 1916 provides that the maximum rate of pension payable to the child of a deceased or disabled soldier shall be 7s 6d per week. Previously it had been ss. But will anyone say that this is sufficient? And no provision is made for increasing the rate in a case where the mother of a child or children may die while the father is away on active service. How far is 7s 6d likely to go in maintaining and educating orphan children, unless it is the wish of the State to pauperise them. We are pleased to see that this matter has received the attention of the Second Division League, who suggest a separation allowance of Is 6d per day to each child, and to every motherless child 2s 6d per day. The suggested pension on death is 10s 6d per week for children, and 17s Cd per week for motherless children. Even this scales does not err on the side of extravagance. It is proposed by the League that the State should allow a widow without children £2 5s 6d per week on the death of the husband, while a child, who has to be clothed, fed, and educated, is allowed only a little over a third of that sum. This is one of the inequalities which; it is hoped the Government will take into consideration when framing the Pension Act Amendment Bill which is to be brought forward this session.