“Whacking-Up” the Canteen Fund

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 53, 25 May 1927, Page 13

“Whacking-Up” the Canteen Fund

RETURNED MEN MOVE PETITION BEING CIRCULATED LARGE body of ex-soldiers at present is inquiring: “What about the Canteen Fund?” A petition is being circulated among returned men demanding “that all securities and moneys belonging to the New Zealand War Canteen F_nd, at present held by the War Fuvis Council at Wellington, be immediately handed over to a responsi de body elected by the returned soldiers of New Zealand, with a view to winding up and distributing the funds. The promise was made to soldiers early in the war that when hostilities ceased all funds and property derived from the operation of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force canteens would he distributed among the men of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

Lately, however, the War Fuads Council has stated its intention to hold the funds for 20 years, and to use the accumulated money to supplant the Patriotic Funds, which by then will have been spent. But some ex-soldiers who have not forgotten the Canteen Fund and their own contributions to it ask why the fund is not to be applied as was originally intended. Any men suffering from war disabilities in 20 years’ time, they claim, should be able to look to the Government of the day for any help they require, but at present times are hard enough to justify something being done with the canteen profits now.

The administration of the fund, which it is estimated amounts to between £200,000 and £300,000, was taken over by the War Funds Council without the returned soldiers being consulted, and they are not represented on the council.

The petition being circulated is not sponsored by the Returned Soldiers’ Association, which is, however, prepared to ask that a certain amount of the interest falling due should be applied to alleviating the distress that exists among unemployed returned soldiers, and the Auckland branch is bringing that forward **s a remit to the next annual conference. It is understood that at next meeting of the executive of the Auckland Returned Soldiers’ Association the circulators of the petition will lie enabled to attend and present their case.

In support of their view that the fund should be made accessible as soon as possible, and “whacked up,” the case has been cited of an exsoldier with one leg who has been out of work for three months, and who, to provide for his dependants, hr.s taken to lumping coal. The skin it is claimed, has been worn frmi the stump of his leg. He is characteristic of many cases at present, in which the pension received is not a sufficient aid, while at the same time it militates against chances of other assistance.