Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 1942. RE-ESTABLISHING THE SOLDIER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 June 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 1942. RE-ESTABLISHING THE SOLDIER.

AT the annual meeting of the Wairarapa Patriotic Association on Wednesday, Mr Duncan McGregor observed that although the Trustees of the Wairarapa Training Farm had placed that property at the disposal of the Government for the training of returned men in farm work they did not seem to have got any further forward. A Rehabilitation Board had been set up, Mr McGregor added, and although a property had been taken up in the Waikato for farm training, no steps had been taken to use the Wairarapa Training Farm, on which the Trustees had spent money to put it in good order for that purpose. It must be assumed, or at all events hoped, that this neglect is only temporary. The Wairarapa Training Farm is a firstclass property of its kind, well developed and equipped with necessary buildings. It undoubtedly should serve again, as it did after the last war, a very valuable purpose as a training centre for returned soldiers desirous of taking up a life on the land. Training establishments of various kinds, it may be supposed, will take a very important place in the organisation that must ’be developed with a view to assisting members of our lighting forces who stand in. need of assistance to resume their place in civil life and with good prospects. There is no longer any question of looking only, or perhaps even mainly to land settlement, as a means of assisting to re-establish the returned soldier. Largely because it was carried out with more enthusiasm than discretion, tlie soldier settlement undertaken on a great scale in this country after the last war was in part a disastrous and disheartening affair for the Dominion and for many individual settlers. Profiting by that experience it should be possible to do a great deal better in helping men who return from the present war to settle on the land. Everyone should now be able to agree that there is need of the greatest care in seeing to it that intending settlers are personally fitted for their venture and that land is made available to them in. conditions which will give them every reasonable chance of achieving success. An effective use of establishments like the Wairarapa Training Farm should be one excellent, means of: ensuring that soldier settlement is carried out in the right conditions. While soldier settlement must get its due share of attention there should be a comprehensive exploration also of other desirable fields of industrial, commercial or professional activity and of methods by which these fields may be opened to returning soldiers desirous of entering them. It has a most important bearing on possibilities of this kind that schemes now in operation for the intensive training of unskilled men so that they may qualify as skilled workers in building and other trades are giving most encouraging results. Under one of these schemes, for example, men are being trained in thirty weeks to carry out skilled work in the construction of dwellings. Similar schemes, applied perhaps to the establishment of new industries as well as to the manning and expansion of existing industries, may be made to play a very important part in the establishment of many of our returning soldiers in civil life in conditions satisfactory and advantageous to themselves and creditable to the Dominion.