QUICKER BENEFITS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 51, 11 May 1942, Page 3

QUICKER BENEFITS

«. MEN RETURNING FROM OVERSEAS LAND SETTLEMENT AND TRAINING OF DISABLED MEN. Although necessary legislative machinery existed for the operation of schemes for the rehabilitation of servicemen, those benefits were not yet available to the considerable number of men returned from active service overseas, it was stated at the annual meeting of the South Taranaki Returned Soldiers' Association. It was decided to ask the annual conference to consider a remit urging that steps be taken to make these schemes operative immediately, more patricularly those for the settlement of ex-servicemen on the land and the training of disabled men in new occupations. Other remits tei he submitted to the conference are:—■ That the Government be requested to make available to the dependents' allowances of members of the armed; forces the 5 per cent increase recently granted by the Arbitration Court to cover the increased cost of living. That the Government be again requested to grant free rail warrants to servicemen for overseas service while on final leave to enable them to visit more than one locality. That the Government be urged to enact legislation providing that certain classes of defaulters from militai*3 r service be deprived of their civil rights for a period of years.

SUPER BLACK MARKET

1911, we were obliged to buy smuggled potatoes' at 1/3 the pound . . . I have spent thousands of francs buying from the "black market"—bacon, wet, straight out of the salt, cost 15/-. a pound; butter 16/(5; cheese 12/6; brown Hour 8/-; tea and coffee 80/- a pound; eggs 1/1 and 1/2 each. Two slabs of milk chocolate £2 6s; rice at 8/- a pound . . . Mothers were and are, obliged to buy pigs' food, potato parings, to give to their little ones. One small boy w r as sick at school, on being asked what he had eaten, lie replied "potato peelings."—Talk by a Belgian on 'A Belgian Housewife').