WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 13 June 1917, Page 3

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

CIVIL SERVANTS’ WAR BONUS

PUBLIC PROTESTS. WELLINGTON, June 11. The protest from Christchurch against the Civil Servants’ war bonus, which, it is rumoured, is again to he included in the Government’s financial proposals this year, is not being very warmly endorsed in Wellington. There are too many people in the capital city personally interested in the State bounty to allow anything like unanimity in its condemnation. Few families here are without some connection, more or less intimate, with the Civil Service. But there is a strong under-current of feeling which in any other community would amount to public opinion, in warm sympathy with the resolution of the Canterbury Education Board. It denounces the payment of the bonus as a scandalous misuse of the taxpayers’ money and as a monstrous discrimination in favour of those who hav'e against those who have not. Perhaps its language is a little extravagant, but when it is remembered that among the people who received the bongs were at one end men enjoying handsome salaries and at the other girls being taught telegraphy at the expense of the State and temporary hands in the Defence Department, it is at least understandable.

MORE PROMISCUOUS GENEROSITY.

There is, however, another piece of promiscuous State generostiy which appears to have escaped the notfce of the members of the Canterbury Education Board or to be too nearly connected with their own administration to receive their pointed attention. It seems that when a teacher employed by the Education Department joins the Expeditionary Force and obtains a commission his salary as a teacher is continued as a very pleasant little addition to his pay as an officer. In this way a young fellow who has been earning £l5O or £l6O a year by the drudgery associated with the charge of a country school or with a junior mastership in one of the centres of, population may at once double his income by joining one of the Reinforcements if his training, as it well may, fits him to take a commission. If he is married, or if he chooses to marry after he has made certain of the larger income, he receives the married teacher’s allowance form the Defence Department. If, however, he remains a private merely with a private’s pay he gets no consideration at all by reason of his profession as a teacher. It would Tie interesting to hear what the Canterbury Education B’oard has to say about this.

• i LAND FOR SOLDIERS

The announcement that the Government has purchased a block of land at Southbridge, one of the richest agricultural districts in Canterbury, for settlement by returned soldiers, has been received with general satisfaction by people here interested in the welfare of the men coming back from the front. But it has drawn attention to the fact that the great ! bulk of the settlement of this cETaracer which so far has been completed has taken place in the Wellington district, which happens to have a Lands Commissioner and a Land Board that have thrown themselves with very special enthusiasm into this work. Soldiers from the South Island in particular, who naturally would like to settle down in the part of the Dominion with which they are best acquainted, complain that they are not given the ready assistance in acquiring land that is extended to men anxious to make -homes for themselves in the North Island. Enquiries show that it is information rather than anything else that is required by these Tneli and it has been suggested that the publication in pamphlet form of particulars of all the land available would attract many more of them to their own districts, i

GAMBLING

A very gratifying access of activity on the part of the local Police has resulted in a number of the small fry among the bookmakers doing business in Wellington being hailed before the Stipendiary Magistrate and more or less’ substantially penalised for their transgressions against the law. B'ut the big men who employ little armies of assistants up and down the country and gather in large incomes from the cupidity and stupidity of people who imagine they can get rich quickly by backing doubles and engagingin other forms of illicit betting are still carrying on business as usual and apparently are going to escape scathed. It is not unlikely the whole question of gambling will come up for discussion during the approaching session of Parliament, and if it -does an attempt will he made to catch.

these men by a drastic amendment of the law making "betting on horse-rac-ing in any form apart from the totalisator an offence punishable by imprisonment without the “option of a fine. Nothing short of this seems capable of suppressing an evil wffiich is discrediting legitimate sport and doing incalculable injury to the morals 'and well-being of the confmunity.