SOLDIERS' GRIEVANCES

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2682, 31 January 1916, Page 7

SOLDIERS' GRIEVANCES

MAYOR OF AUCKLAND ON THE POSITION. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, January 'Id. Mr. Gunson (the Mayor), speaking at a meeting at the Soldiers' Club, _at which a iieturned Soldiers 1 Association was formed, said he believed the Government, and particularly tho Defence Department, had i'ailod altogether to appreciate tho fact that tho soldiers of tho Now Zealand Forces had joined the Army voluntarily. 'To got anything from the Defence Department was like drawing blood from a stone, even in cases obviously genuine. This was an unfair and improper attitude ,'to adopt. Dozens of cases had como under his notice in which it was palpably clear tliafc the men's claims wore just. Again and again he had boen astonished, that they could not p;et the Department to rectify the trouble. Pay books produced by the uiou showed the Department to be in their debt, yet tho men could, not Ret money which was theirs by right. Mr. Gunson described tho allowance of thirty shillings, or a suit of that value, for men who had to resume civilian clothes as parsimonious and absurd. These things bad to be reetilied; unless the Department saw that redress was made, they would agitato till the position was won for the soldiers. An association was formed, the objects being to generally safeguard and further the interests of returned soldiers.