RETROSPECTIVE PAYMENTS TO SOLDIERS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 7566, 12 May 1919, Page 5

RETROSPECTIVE PAYMENTS TO SOLDIERS.

EXPLANATION BY MINISTER.

(Per Pr&s Association.)

Referring to the announcement in the Soldieis" Guide regarding retrospective payments, Mr. D. Seymour, General Secretary of the Returned Soldiers' Association, stated that the Association wished to njake.it quite clear that tho Minister still denied his responsibility in tho platter of such allowances to children. While normally the allowances arc payable as from the date of entering camp, the retrospective allowance are to' be payable only from tha I date of embarkation.

Sir James Allen to-day made the following statement regarding Mr. Seymour's criticism: I note Mr. D. Seyuiour, General Secretary of the Returned Soldiers' Association, in commenting on tho retrospective ; allowances that aro to be paid to the wives of soldiers ot the N.Z. Expeditionary Forces refers to the condition that the allowances are payable as from the dnfco of embarkation as characteristic of the pettifogging effort of the Defence Department to minimise the amount rightly due to them. This criticism is quite unjustified. The condition has not been imposed because of any desire to limit the monetary payment, but to meet difnciilties due to the very incomplete state of the early records of tho Expeditionary Force camps. The records for the Main Body and earlier reinforcements do not indicate the status oi the soldier—that is they do not indicate whether a man was in camp as .1 fit soldier due to embark for active service-, or whether he was an unfit man ongagjcl on home service. The only evidence of active service status in the case of soldiers of the Main Body and j the early reinforcements is the fact of J embarkation. That is the real reason why the condition making the retrospective allowances payable as from embarkation has been imposed, as it pives only dear and definite line of distinction between active and home service. Tfc might lie'possible in these cases for the pay "branch to trace each man s history' from the old records in order to ascertain tba date when h« entered camp, but this inquiry would entail a. great amount of labour and would in many instances be inccnelußn«e, and would certainly -nrevent retrospective grants being available in the first week in .Tone next. As a matter of fact, it would delay payments for months.