RETURNED SOLDIERS' ASSOCIATION

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 128, 3 June 1919, Page 3

RETURNED SOLDIERS' ASSOCIATION

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In view of fcho rejection of the remit to the Conference of Returned Soldiers at Christchurch, recommending the admission to the association of men who had seen active service in South Africa, and elsewhere, it seems to me that a few observations on the status now claimed by those who (voluntarily or involuntarily) have participated in the present war, setting out the point of view of those who, to their regret, and for various reasons, are reluctantly obliged to stand outside the fold, may not be out of place. In the first place it may be well to consider exactly what is a returned soldier "within the meaning" of this very exclusive association. The moment one attempts the definition one is struck by the varying degree of merit of its members. Let us, then, roughly classify them into :— (a) Volunteers who actually risked life and limb on-active service. (b) Men who volunteered, went oversea, but were retained on home service in England or elsewhere. (c) Men who went to Samoa. (d) Conscripts who accepted their call in the ballot without appeal. (c) Ballotted men who appealed, sometimes more than once, and tried their level best not to go. (f) Men with permanent soft billets on transports—more particularly on transports outside the danger zone. (g) Men who went oversea, and through their own fault contracted a disI ease or disability which ensured their return to New Zealand before seeing a shot fired. (h) The two thousand odd men admitted by the Hon. the Minister for Defence as having had a pleasant little trip owing to their having been, on arrival oversea, reclassified from "Fit A." to C 2. It will, I am sure, be conceded that, in considering on their merits the claim of South African and other veterans to join a " Returned Soldiers' Association," and applying to it the only real test—that of service—the veterans would have a better qualification than any of the above classes except the first; and if the association will not admit them it is eertajift that, without inconsistency, it could Mot admit the members of any future Expeditionary Force, say, if another war occurred. In plain language, then, this is an exclusive association, out entirely for the benefit of its own members, many of .whom have done no fighting at all, and thousands of whom only answered the call of patriotism at the pressure of the ballot. ■ There is another question, too, affect-, ing' even the present war—and that is ' the position of men who actually volunteered, and did their best to get away, but who were turned down on medical grounds. Is there any reason why a man who, say, was drawn against his will in the ballot, and has become a returned soldier by reason of " force majeure," should have any preference in the obtaining of a billet over the rejected volunteer? I think not, any more than I think that the fact of a man having been away to fight endows him with any mental qualification not possessed before he went away. At the present moment, the Government Departments are full of clerks whose passport to office is that they are returned soldiers, and I believe that the present dismissal of non-returned men, otherwise competent for their job, is hot likely to make for efficiency. I yield to none in my admiration of the real ■patriots—those who volunteered before powerful political pressure had evolved bonuses and ridiculously high separation allowances. The soldier—returned and unreturned —has been very well treated in this country, but I am unaware that he has done such much better work than the English Tommy or the French Poilu as to deserve a recompense in money and advantages so immeasurably greater than theirs. In any case I do not consider that he has made out a good claim to preferential treatment over all other classes in the community, and 1 think be is rather foolish to alienate from himself the sympathy of other warworn veterans who, in their. time, did as much as he did, in this, that they too took the risk of death and the much greater risk of fell disease; and did it for very much less than the warrior of to-day has exacted for his service. The total number of war veterans in this country cannot be very large, certainly not large enough to influence by their voting anything that the returned men of the present war proposed; but, as they are of necessity all of mature age and experience, is it not possible that their admission to the R.S.A. would be of some slight advantage to the more youthful campaigners of to-day, who, seemingly, like the frog in Aesop's fable, are blowing themselves up to a size not intended by nature, and who may, if they are not careful, share the fate of the frog? There is at least as much ability in New Zealand outside the ranks of the returned soldiers as within them, possibly much more;- and perhaps if it were properly utilised it could effectively protect the interests of those who are now to be made, subservient to one of the worst forms of class organisation. At any rate, I feel convinced that the setting forth of a few truths (whilst it may bring upon me the wrath of many who look forward to a long life of ease at the public expense as a reward for doing what I did.for nothing with an Imperial Regiment twenty years ago) will remind the genuine and generous patriot that there are other "claims to public recognition than those so insistently put forward by a noisy and self-seeking minority.—l am, etc., ERNEST W. MUNTON.