TREATMENT OF RETURNED SOLDIERS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16143, 22 February 1918, Page 6

TREATMENT OF RETURNED SOLDIERS.

v ■ " MAYOR OF TIMARU'S CRITICISM. (PRESS association telegram.) TIMARU, February 21. Speaking at a meeting of the St. JoTIn Ambulance Association to-night, the .viayor (Mr J. Maling) sharply criticised the Government's treatment of returned soldiers, in sending th<£n to "hospitals nearest their respective homes, ' regardless of whether there was accommodation for them. At the meeting of the Hospital Board on Wednesday two doctors, who were members of the Board, had spoken of the need for a consumption sanatorium for sc 1diers in this island, as well as in ine North Island, and had said that the crowding of returned soldiers into hospitals was unfair to the soldiers ana also to the civilian patients. If the accommodation was overtaxed now. what would be the position when thousands of men returned after the war? j 'ie Mayor also condemned what L<» described as the niggardly treatment of men who had returned on leave, in refusing them pay. After what these men had done for the country, li.e people wished tlicm to be paid, and would not begrudge the monev. 'Ihe win-the-war" policy should not cause nSU^J?"'' o '' '° °" r s " l,ll>rS «» 10 Plaid. Ma! '° r ' s ««« V