WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR OUR MEN?

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2497, 25 June 1915, Page 4

WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR OUR MEN?

Sir, —When the House meets the foremost question under discussion will be that of providing an adequate compensation for those brave men who have offered themselves for our protection and defence. The pension provided can never fully repay them, though it be tho most generous the Dominion can provide. But would it not be possible to augment it by. a free gift or by a hundred years' igrant, on the same lines as the Maori grant, of some of the unoccupied Crown lands? No one should grudge them a share of the soil which many have died to protect. Even those whose health is so shattered that they can nevor return to their formor occupations would feel that the people of New Zealand truly valued their services if they were given only an acre of ground to which they could retire, and by which they could add a little to the pension allotted them. In. the past we have seen the destitution of nurses and heroes of the Crimea and of men of the Light Brigade. It should be our pleasure, as it is our duty, to provide freely for those men and women who havo given their services in our time of need. Of those who return unwounded there will bo a fair quota on whom the shock of activ6 fighting, of the horrors of war, and of the misery and death they have faced upon the battlefields, will leave a mark m shattered nerves and painful memories. They, too, deserve some recompense at our hands. If it be possible, I should like to see every man who has gone to the front given a free share of our territory. In days of old, William the Conqueror took the a ores of England and divided them as he would. If our little country passes from our hands it is certain that the conquerors will do the same. Let us, then, not grudge to those who have shed their blood in our defence a generous share in the wealth the.y have preserved.—l am, etc.. PEMINA.