The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, AUGUST 25th, 1917 THE BURNING QUESTION.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 25 August 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 25th, 1917 THE BURNING QUESTION.

(With which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News),

The War Loan is becoming a burning question; the money is not .coming forward so readily as it did for the eight million loan. (Small investors’ subscriptions are mounting up, but it takes a great many small parcels of bond s and certificates to make up half-a-million even. However, the Chairman of the Bank of New Zealand seems to be quite satisfied that the money required will be forthcoming voluntarily, and he is of opinion that Sir Joseph Ward is having no troubled mdments respecting the success of the loan He says the great rush will come within the last few days, and he further states that from facts that have come under his obversation he is satisfied that the people of New Zealand may be relied upon to meet the loan to the fullest means of their support and credit. This is reassuring, and, of course, is what should be. The money required is only the merest fraction of the wealth of the Dominion, and if it were not enthusiastically forthcoming then all the compulsory measures necessary ought to be set in operation, not only to take the fraction of the wealth now asked for but a very much larger one, and in case of failure this is no doubt what would happen. The wealth of the country is recorded almost to a sovereign and the accumulated wealth of the Taihape District is known to the Government almost to exactitude. There is little we can do, have or procure now-a-days that is not a subject for chronicling by some Department. Land, money shares, and all other forms of wealth; what we receive for our wool, our meat, timber, everything finds its way through numerous channels, to the Government Statistician’s office. It would be little use for any shirker with means to s'ay he could not afford to contribute to the War Loan, for Tiis possessions are known. This is obvious, and therefore none of us can be allowed to shirk. We want no compulsion, however, the huge wealth of this district as shown by records is go-

S ing to do its duty to the Estate and (Empire. The district over "which this jounral is read, sent away last year nearly 'half-a-millions worth of wool alone, a proportionate value of meat also left our terirtory. If this happens in one season, of the war our contributions to the War Loan should flect our income for the whole period. We have no fear whatever about our patriotism" and the realisation of the great crisis that our Empire and the war have reached. The voluntary giving of our settlers is a satisfactory indication of how they will regard the War Loan. Borough Councils and other local bodies are organising ‘ their respective districts, and it may be taken for granted that if this district will not contribute its fair quota then steps will be taken to arouse us to a sense of what is our duty, and of what we must do, simply because there is no way of shelving our re-

sponsibility to feed, clothe and equip

the men we have freely sacrificed to fig-ht for us.

MINISTERIAL OBTUSENE6S

| The Minister of Defence has taken (a deliberate stand in hi g persistance in ruining men who have been foolishly compelled to sell up, sacrifice business and home, and to go into camp. A few days in camp discloses that someone has blundered; a Medical Board should have known that the men were medically unfit beyond all redemption. The want of care, or the inabilitjr to detect disease of the Military Medical Board results in men selling up their homes and businesses for whatever they can gpt for them,, relinquishing their vocation in life and handing over to others a connection which has taken them years to build up. Camp life discloses in a day or two that they are quite unfit and the Defence Department callously pitches them out without a beg pardon even. Is this not comparable to some cases of Prussianism? It is the might of the Dofench Department against the right of the unfortunate individual Why will not Sir James Allen for a moment imagine himself in that man’s’ place? Why will he not honour the very old and still accepted axiom that an injury to the individual is the concern of the whole State, Is It for treatment such as he is meting out men who have stupidly been sent into camp, who, though defective for military work at the front, are among the very cream and in the highest strata of our business life- that he was recommended by the Government as a fit subject for special honours from the King? I Has the Minister of Defence made any greater monetary sacrifice than these men are compelled to make, | who are rendered homeless and without means af gaining a livelihood, and then turned callously upon the world to commence all anev not think so, and we can scarcely conceive of one seemingly just ground why the Minister should refuse to give these injured men some compensation. With deliberation he tells Parliament that he does not know how to meet the difficulty. Should not the possession of the merest shred of moral sense point him to the only way of dealing with it—give something for that taken away. Members of Parliament bring cases under the Minister’s notice in which men are ruined, still the Minister is obdurate, he still sees no way out of the difficulty. His attitude is past conception by any man that has a streak of justice runinng through him.. With questionable and faulty lo

g :i ' f>,ml latilc f intelligent grip Sir James Allen ingenuously tells the House that if the men had gone to the front they would -have no claim for compensation for loss of business and home. Did it never occur to the Minister that men going to the front are in continuous receipt of pay, that their dependants are provided for, and that a pension awaits them when they return, and also that the country has admitted its responsibility to find farms or otherwise find means of satisfactorily returning these men to civil life? We wonder what sort of howl would go up if Sir James Allen were compelled to start life de novo owing to the blunder of some Governmnt institution. The duty of the Defence Minister to these men is obvious; everything possible should be done to return them to the sFage of usefulness from which they were disturbed by the Defence Dpartment. Anyway this i s the conclusion we arrive at by putting ourselves in the place of injured men.