WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 26 March 1917, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

SOLDIERS’ PAY. THE CIVIL SERVANTS’ CASE. WELLINGTON, March 23. The Acting-Prime Minister returned the .only possible answer to the deputation which waited upon him to ask that the military pay and allowances cf public servants called up for active service shoud be made equal to their civil pay. The difficulty he saw, of course, was that it would be extremely unfair to grant this concession to public servants wjithout securing a similar advantage to those in private employment. The members of the deputation based their appeal largely on a statement made by Sir James Allen himself eighteen months ago, in which he expressed a hope that employers would keep the recruits’ places open for them, pay part of their salaries, and bear their general interests in view. But that was before the days of compulsory service, when employers could be asked to assist in making the voluntary system effective, and the whole position has changed since then. Now the most the Minister could do for the deputation was to promise to refer its request to Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward when these gentlemen return to the Dominion.

COSTLY SAVING. The claim of the deputation that a great part of the money which would be required to provide civil pay for public servants at the front would he obtained from savings, has loosened the tongues of a number of business men and others in regard to the various economies practised by the public departments. One member of the deputation stated that the places of the higher paid men at the front were being filled by lower paid men and that in this way a single department was saving £BO,OOO or £90,000 a year. First year cadets at £SO a year were doing the work for which experiencec men had been receiving £l5O a year. But no one pretends that the service Is as well maintained by the inexperienced hands as it was By the experienced hands, and as a matter or fact the public has contributed very materially in the day of ready sacrifice • and patient sufferings towards the savings. To ask it now to pay a largely increased sum for an inferior service is, as it has been put colloquially, a little too strong.

UNION RATES. Other sections of the community comprising most of the restless people, who tor lack of a better term are commonly known as Socialists, are rejoicing, perhaps a little prematurely, over tne conversion of the civil servants to the principle of union rates of pay for military service. They have been insisting all along that the soldiers should be paid a living wage, according to the standards laid down by some of the ultra-progressive members of the House when the Military Bervice Bill was passing through Parliament, and they are now welcoming the civil servants as allies in the claim for right and justice. But probably the civil servants would require a much more precise definition of “union rates” than has yet been given by the member for Lyttelton and the member for Grey before they accept them as a satisfactory solution of the problem they submitted to the Acting Prime Minister. Already married men at the front, when recent concessions are taken into account, are being paid practically what would be regarded as union rates at home. SECOND DIVISION.

Judging from such particulars of the movement as have been published the promoters of th§ Second Division . League are 'venturing upon a somewhat hazardous experiment. The purposes of the League, it Seems, frbm these particulars, are to secure uniformity of action and to place the organised views of its members before the authorities, Just how far these purposes are subversive of military discipline it is for the Minister of Defence •to say, but a high officer to whom the subject was mentioned today, expressed himself as much astonished at men already enrolled as soldiers contemplating the formation of a “union” to bring pressure upon their lawful commanders. It was an innovation in military discipline that , never had been attempted before, and ought not to be tolerated for a single moment. The fact that the Mayor is to preside at a meeting to be held In Wellington on Tuesday to form a sranch of the Legue here suggests that the intentions of the promoters Lave been misunderstood, but at the moment this only adds to th interest | with -which developments ar' awaited, j