The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 1918. FAMINE OR INCREASED PRODUCTION.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 January 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. A ND WAMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 1918. FAMINE OR INCREASED PRODUCTION.

(With which is incorporated The Tai nape post and Walmarino News).

Within a fortnight about three thousand soldiers have come bach to ..neir hemes in New Zealand, some ot .hem having left with the Main Body having been in active service in Egypt, Gallipoli, or France for the three years, fighting and suffering, risking their lives in destroying the enemies of the British Empire. vVhen one looks upon these men, the maimed, crippled blind, disfigured and ooustitutionless, one wonders what the Empire, or what New Zealand will do for them.. The very sight of our heroes’ return wells up a scene'of what' they, have been through since they left tp save their race or give up their lives in the. There, they are, struggling through the burning sands of Egypt while their less ; fortunate fellows fall dead beside them; they are hanging on to inhospitable rocks in Gallipoli under the merciless hail* of shot and shell from Turk and German guns; when annihilation faced them they eluded their Turkish enemies, got away from the rocks of death and were transported to the trenches in . France. Mentally, we seeithem swarming on to ships In the Aegean Sea; follow them through the: Mediterraheanj exposed to danger of being submarined and sent to a watery-grave • every moment of the journey;- they land, thankfully, on the highly cultivated, beautiful French landscape and are entrained for a battlefield, where the destruction «f life is practiced to a magnitude that is only conceivable to those who witness it or take part in it. # The very elements upon which they stood and breathed in were unstable and poisoned_ They see their comrades, some of their next-door neighbours in New Zealand, blown up skyward by mines, shattered by a shower of high explosive bombs, torn to veritable shreds with shrapnel, mown down by the hail of machine-guns, pierced with a sniper’s bullet, or laid low with one or other of the poisons or deviltries that total of science has enabled arPunscrupulous, ruthless, lustful enemy to invent. There they lie, every nerve taut, in trenches with water up to their bodies, shivering, wet, semifrozen, waiting for the wall of fire from their own artillery, behind which they scramble over shell-holed “noman’s” land to attack the enemy in his trenches. Then comes the rush forward, trenches are captured, the artilery barrage has lifted and our men are discovered in hand-to-hand bayonet actions, in trials of strength and agility with butts of their rifles, too horrible and too awful a scene for depiction. They are victorious, but at what a cost? Those who have received no wounds, or only such as still leaves them able to do something, turn their attention to their fallen comrades, mates and friends. They have escaped once more with their lives and they have no thought for themselves, they are seen helping and directing stretcher-bearers in gathering up the human remains in which some life is left, before attending to their own needs. Worn out by fatigue from stress of battle, many bleeding from bayonet thrusts, and other flesh wounds, they* aj-e toiling back to their dug-outs, to their holes in the ground, where they sleep from sheer exhaustion till aroused to prepare for a similar experience. This outlines the mental picture that wells up spontaneously as one looks upon such a, body of men as arrived at the Taihape railway station a few days ago. It also indicates Something of

what those men have done for New Zealand, and impels one to ask what is to become of them, what is New Zealand going to do for them? Of all the thousands that have returned Mr Massey hastens to tell a reporter that six hundred have been placed the land. He confines his remarks to one case in which four, only four, soldiers have been successfully started in farming. This is at the coldest, bleakest end of the South Island. There were five sections, but an applicant for the fifth section could not be found and so a bit of aggregation was practiced and the neglected farm was fenced in by two of the four men. It savours somewhat of an insult to tell the anxious people of this country about the settlement of four returned soldiers, while they want to know what is happening to the thousands Returns of returned soldier settlement should be issued monthly so that the friends and relatives, and also r considerate public might kno.w just how the Government is providing for the men who have faced death and hell that our country may be free. Reports and complaints continue to be circulated which, if true, are a positive scandal. It is said that some of the men after going through experiences such as we have outlined, can only get land where they will be exiled from their homes and friends. After two or three years in almost dally risking their lives, and having, in many cases, ruined their constitution for their country, a generous country can, and will, only exile them from friends and families, in some out-of-the-way place where the class of farming and methods of farming are quite different to what they have been accustomed to. Our Government is not giving the serious attention to the repatriation of returning men that the country will insist upon. The question of production is of extreme vital importance and our Government is doing its utmost, wittingly or unfittingly, to reduce its volume in this country while it should be striving by every means at its command to increase if. A recent cable stated that the British authorities saw famine ahead after the war as there was an increasing shortage in production" in every part of thp Empire _ . British) landowners were told that every foot of ground would have to be cultivated to feed the returning millions. ' If these British authorities could only see the hundreds of thousands of acres in this climate of ' luxurious growth that are" little- more than waste land which 0 a Government, callout, indifferent or A ignorant of the duties it was elected to perform, is allowing to be aggregated into huge estates, and are little more - than parks for the graitfication of a few, they would 1 marvel at the wanton stupidity. This country is not producing sufficient for the needs of its sparse population; famine undoubtedly faces the Empire as the food grown is not enough to go round, and yet no effort is made to increase production and save our people from famine. Are our soldiers coming back to the country they have fought for to die of starvation in exile? Surprise will be expressed at our remarks, but surprise is always felt when someone warns people of a coming calamity. Lord Roberts died in despair at not being able to persuade Britain to see the oncoming bloodshed Those who are now urging greater production to avoid the famine that is certain without it, are regarded as scaremongers, as 'Lord Roberts and Kitchener were. Since history began it has ever been thus, but with the bitterest of bitter experiences that the British Empire is passing through It might reasonably be asumed that people would realise what the authorities a>e heralding. They say it is to be either famine or more production after f>eace is declared. The Central Powers will constitute a demand of incalculable magnitude; the production of the world must be shared with them. No matter what the present or past they must not be starved to death after hostilities cease. Nearly all the producing world is involved in war, in fact it is only a few countries in which intensive cultivation is unpracticed and unknown that are left t 0 proouce, and in those countries production is decreasing in volume, despite the crying need for more food. While Britain is demanding that every foot of available land shall be cultivated we have hundreds of thousands of acres that are only grazing two or three sheep to the acre, and this land is In he hands of a mere few. The people o this country, and particularly 'the returned soldiers themselves, should seriously f 0 H 0w up these statements about food shortage throughout the worid after the war. From reports cabled to us from Britain visio'ns are conjured up of what took place after ritain’s previous war in Flanders, after Waterloo, when a beneficent, bungling body of legislators passed a law to make it lawful for returned soldiers to beg for food to keep body and soul together. To-day there Is supreme need of soldiers to be solicitous for their future.