FARMS FOR SOLDIERS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 165, 8 October 1941, Page 4

FARMS FOR SOLDIERS

Sir, —In the city newspapers lately, it was reported that the Government had spent £86,571 in purchasing "dairying land already in grass, for future settlement of returned soldiers, at an average price of less than £5 per acre." It is well known that the cost of bringing in bush or swamp land is in the vicinity of£3o an acre and iately a Governmexijgxperiment had cost over £100 per acre.

Recently I walked for hours over miles of deserted farm lands, in part of the Auckland Province, where a generation ago men had toiled and sweated to make homes and where to-day one can step from one ragwort plant to the next and where the blackberry vines are hurry Ing to meet each other across the waste places. In the valleys there were the remains of white bleached bullock bones and long lengths of rusty fencing wire, lay where fences had been round the paddocks.

On a nice warm slope facing the noonday sun, . there were some rows of fruit trees and some house blocks which had at one time supported a house. Rambler roses climbed over stumps at the front and row r s of daffodils arid snowdrops were still bravely blooming along the path. With my experience as a successful pioneer on more friendly land, I could lean on my staff on the rising hill above and reconstruct in imagination, the struggle which took p'.ace so many long years ago, when some hopeful healthy man had spent years of toil, while he marched towards his dream of a home with a wife and some healthy boys and girls romping over the hills attending to stock. And now the blight of cattle sick country had wiped his slate so clean, that it was not possible to view it without a heart *che. Surely when our brave boys at the present war come marching back, after leaving Hitler's bones bleaching on sandhills someAvhere, they vvill find that we will have something better to offer them than the above. Even a small farm of 40 to 50 acres ready for the cows with a garden and orchard, would be a ; Start tow r ards balancing the lopsided account which shows that many of us stay at home and draw £6 to £10 a week in safety, while the soldiers risk their lives to protect us and we pay them 7s a day.

Just now there is an agitation in the city for the building of more city houses for soldier's wives, so as to ensure that the taxes collected from country workers —the onlysource of revenue —will he harvested by city dwellers. To many "war-tim& Is harvest time" but the welfare of our soldiers themselves should be the country's first concern.

There is still large areas of farm land in the Bay of Plenty, held in farms of hundreds and thousands of Acres, where it has been proved in the same district, that 80 1 acres or less has supported large families in comfort. Let's expect the city and city newspapers to play the game, and leave the harvest stand over to more peaceful year? YoU'S (ic., N.Z. AUSSIE.