The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1930 THE CASE FOR THE EX-SOLDIER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1930 THE CASE FOR THE EX-SOLDIER

THE report of the Ex-Soldiers’ Rehabilitation Commission * appears at a time when the position of many returned men has been so aggravated by unemployment as to be worse than ever before. It is a tragic reflection on the insincerity of official promises that scores of the men now clamouring for work in Auckland, and obtaining food for themselves and their dependants at the “Manna House,” are ex-service men who, when going on active service, w r ere given the most elaborate asswrances that after the Avar their future Avelfare would be virtually guaranteed. With the expected recovery of the economic position, Avork will no doubt be offering for many of these men, but by the time it comes their moral fibre may have been sapped by their present difficulties. This is a point traversed in the commission’s report, which is a very human document stressing in every paragraph that the commission chose throughout to interpret its responsibilities in a broad human spirit rather than according to the strict letter of formal legislation. Taking this line of thought, the members of the commission must haA T e found it almost pathetically easy to discern flaws in the past operation of enactments covering the distribution of pensions and other concessions to returned soldiers. They point out that “the procedure tends to become a codification of set rules and to be go\ r erned rather bv a spirit of the schedule of disabilities than by the exercise of an individual discretion applied to individual cases.” The same complaint has been made against the operations and decisions of the Pensions Boards not once or tAAdce but hundreds of times in the years since the war. Returned men with a legitimate claim for a pension have had their plea rejected on the score of some trifling complication incurred in civil life. In these instances the boards haA 7 e contrived to give the impression that their purpose Avas not to administer justice but to find any aA 7 enue of escape by which the Government might evade its responsibilities. Now that this evil has been pointed out in such precise terms by the commission, there is likely to be a good deal less of it. If the principal recommendations of the commission are put into effect, individual cases will from noAV on have the benign supervision of an organisation whose primary purpose, as distinct from all other concerns, Avill be to promote the welfare of the returned soldier. The proposed constitution of this body, the Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment League, has not been very clearly outlined, but presumably it will be fully representative. It is proposed that it should have a central executive Avith influential official contacts, by which it will be able to get into touch Avith Government departments, local bodies and private employers in the interests of unemployed ex-soldiers. As a further and perhaps even more important phase of its work, it will be given the responsibility of fitting for some form of permanent Avork the many men who are at present not covered by repatriation schemes. There are no doubt a large number of men Avho, immediately after their discharge from hospital, found their way into what seemed useful and satisfactory employment, but Avho from one cause and another have since become out of work, and are in danger of becoming permanent “drifters.” With or without the additional handicap of a Avar injury, such men constitute one of the most important classes Avith which the Soldiers’ Re-establishment League will have to deal. In handling them, the League may have to make up a good deal of lost ground. Some of them will have slipped back considerably since the days Avhen, full of hope and optimism, they left the army to recommence their civil life. In those days a war injury seemed a trifling thing. Among so many, no man could complain; but in the years since, Avhen misfortune, shaken nerves, and economic difficulties have taken their toll, the problems and obstacles in the Avay of making progress in the Avorld have broken many a good man’s spirit. The commission, has covei’ed requirements A r ery fully in its eight recommendations, and one other direction in A\ T hich its efforts deserve particular commendation is its proposal to abolish the ridiculous and unfair time-limits applied both to “attribratability” for Avar-service effects, and to the qualification of certain wives and widoAvs as dependants. Under these restrictions a condition of ill-health which appeared after seven years could not be laid against Avar-service, no matter hoAV justly it might ha\*e been ascribed to it. In the other restriction, wives marrying returned men after the lapse of a certain time could in specific circumstances be eliminated from obtaining benefits as their dependants. It is improbable that the commission had to study its subject long to see the obvious injustice of some of these irksome features, but it wrnnt on to hear the evidence of 166 witnesses, and has gathered an immense quantity of \ T aluable material. Not the least interesting section of its report is that relating to public war funds, Avhich, at this date, might advantageously be centralised in order to saA T e both expense in administration and possible parsimony in distribution.