SOLDIERS ON THE LAND

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32303, 23 August 1943, Page 5

SOLDIERS ON THE LAND

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In these days when rehabilitation of soldiers is giving a great deal of thought, it would be fitting to.face • facts, particularly as farmers see them. Much' comes over the air from. Parliament on the Bill on land settlement which is before the House and there seems to be no doubt that on. both sides .there is a total inability on the part of our. legislators to formulate a policy that has at least an even break of being successful. Nobody wishes to place returned .men on poor land and quite rightly. An opposition member made much of a case where a returned soldier was negotiating, with the /State Advances Department, for a farm at £53 per acre, and the day after the option lapsed the department offered £49 10s. on his behalf, too late, , I think it is a fact that mortgage commissions operating* from 1965 onwards endeavoured to bring first-class. land down to about £35 per acre. It is also a fact that first-class dairying land to-day, in addition to mortgages is loaded with rates and taxes which capitalised equal a further mortgage of even up to £5O pei* acre at 3i per cent., and this before the full weight of the war debt is upon us with a big addition in . taxation. Are we to go blindly forward with the same conditions, the same economy, to be followed by the same failure in rehabilitation, with consequent disillusionment, to eventually heap indignities on returned soldiers as was the case a generation ago.—l am, etc., “57947.”