CAMP CONDITIONS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 173, 24 July 1942, Page 4

CAMP CONDITIONS

Mr. Holland's description of the conditions in the camps, and your own leading article on the subject, would be cheering reading if only Mr. Holland had had any real opportunity of knowing what he was talking about. In a few short days Mr. Holland has made the round of the camps in the Wellington district, and his observations, made no doubt in the constant company of highranking officers, have been such as to convince him that aii is well Speaking as an ex-private soldier, 1 say emphatically that the only way to find out what conditions are really like in the camps is to live there as a soldier among the soldiers. The Minister of the Crown, living in the officers' mess, eating off cnina and sitting down comfortable and dry to his meals, has no chance of observing the conditions under which nine-tenths of the men live. If Mr. Holland really wants to know what the conditions are like, let him take his tin plate and mug in his hand, and live in a camp as an anonymous private soldier for 48 hours at a time. If he then says that he sat down to his meals, that he had them under cover, that his tea was not greasy or cold, that his food was clean, that he was able to wash sometimes in warm water, and that the men's leisure, recreation and education was adequately catered for—that conditions, in a word, were good — then he has a right to be believed. But not till he does this. These things cannot be judged from a distance. IN THE RANKS.