OUR MOTOR-BOAT VOLUNTEERS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 288, 1 September 1919, Page 6

OUR MOTOR-BOAT VOLUNTEERS

Sir,—Your yesterday's issue was illuminating. Iu the correspondence, on top was a letter from one of our Navy boys meekly asking that he may be paid at the same rate as his soldier oomrades. Below this a stay-at-home blents that he is being fleeced over his wool. This latter gentleman and his kind are making, and during the war made, more money from their wool than ever before. And probably the man who is loaded up with interest bought with his eyes open when the price was up. We will be generous enough to impute no sinister motive.

The former man is one of al>out 400 of H6 who served in the Navy. These are some of the items they have had to face on return:—A home to keep going in Now Zealand; businesses wound up; billets that were promised to be kept open well and securely filled; billets filled by Australians, where there was no conscription; service on craft to which the trenches were a circumstance; wet through for weeks, with no chance even of a hot drink; twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, and no overtime rate; on the top of this a solid income tax on pay (think of .it, Mr. Farmer!);no rise in pay to keep pace with the times until last February; no' rise in clothing or other allowances; beyond a few friends no one has welcomed lfim . back—certainly nothing official. Not a single decoration has been awarded, though those won on the field are a greater percentage to any New Zealand Navy man, Even with these few facts 6ince no one has heard a word of complaint from i these men; might we not be spared the shame of seeing: New Zenlanders growlins publicly at having to give a little out of their muoh too solid profits to keep the ball rolline?, When the whole Navy question is settled, and it will not | be' transgressing good taste seeing we J have guests in our midst, I 6hall have j niiich more to publish in this respect — I am, etc., I WHITE ENSIGN, i