The Chronicle LEVIN. TUESDAY,MAY 15,1917. LAND ROR RETURNED SOLDIERS

Levin Daily Chronicle, 15 May 1917, Page 2

The Chronicle LEVIN. TUESDAY,MAY 15,1917. LAND ROR RETURNED SOLDIERS

New Zealand's duty to her returned soldiers is well recognised in general principle, by State and citizen and Rcttler alike. This dominion's plan for providing land, stock and implements for the benefit of suitable soldiers desirous of going upon the land has much to c:mmcnd it. The weak point in it—as Hie Chronicle showed in an article written some eighteen months flgo — is that too academic a view of the matter of obtaining lands for selection by returned soldiers is I 'My to be tnken by those responsible for the selection. People not skilled in land cultivation, and unpractised in the exacting duties of a virgin farm, ■are apt to think that cheap land in districts remote from settlement may give soldier-settlers better chance of profit than the dearer lands located near the cities would do. There can he no greater, no more disastrous fallacy than this. The witnesses are the prematurely aged, rheumatic tortured settlers to ba found throughout the inner areas of Hawke's Bay and the Wairarapa-;. doubtless, too, ill a score of other districts. These men went to their pioneering work with healthy bodies and high hopes; and yet they had this too great premium to pay for "success;." iHow miHi greater, then, must be the risk in the enses of men returned from ths .viawith health undermined to small ov greater degree? The work of fruitgrowing or. poultry-raising, to be sue j oessful financially, needs to bo carried | cut in proximity to good markets; ;>n:l, fu:ther, no man with health i'ii p;v''-od i«li • nld be asked .to rf> a.'n- ' distance afield. Such unforsites will find more than enonc 1 \'-h1 vantages even in the betterMtuated districts. These statements are hut truisms to many of our readers, but they are deserving of serious consideration none the less for that. They who know these fact? as well >as we do have a like duty to perform to the body politic in the first plaico and to the returned soldiers as a body also. It is by keeping true watch over such matters as tliesa tlia 1 : they who are incapacitated from active service by age or other disability may find a useful .means of doing .their duty to the State and to their vicarious fighters for freedom- on the Tjattlei fields of Europe and elsewhere.