The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1918. A MATTER OF URGENCY.

Taihape Daily Times, 15 March 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1918. A MATTER OF URGENCY.

(With which is incorporated The T&j hapo Post and Wairnarlno News).

Now that soldiers are returning to this country in rather considerable numbers the question of what is to become of them in their absorption into the civil and economic life of the community will naturally force itself upon us. j The absorptivity of New Zealand in this connection is indeed; of an abnormal character, but • dt is not so much-the- question of finding wofk as „of Selecting the most suitable 1 occupations’ for the men*; work which they can become so successful at that only their own laxity, or indifference to success Can prevent them from ever falling into a condition of want. No greater stain could besmirch the honour of this country than that which would arise from disregard of what is due from the people to the brave fellows who have offered their very lives ih defence of the British Empire and the freedom of its people. Let not a single man or woman say that the care of’ the men returning is no concern of rtheirs; it should 1 not be,necessary. to remind such people . of Belgium, Servia and Poland. The most hideous, blood-curdling treatment, with death in all its most cruel, barbarous and unbelievable forms was what these countries suffered, and the man who refuses to realise that our country, our wives and daughters, were only saved from similar orgies of worse than brutality by the men who have offered their lives in France and on the ocean in their defence arc no better, no more humane, than the German curse with which the world is at present being scourged. Two thousand three hundred men have, or are, returning this month from the battlefields of Europe; what is going to happen to them? Shall we realise our obligations to thorn, and concern ourselves about seeing that they arc given opportunities to enable them in their infirmities to secure immunity from want as the years and the battle of life press hard upon them? What is going to happen, to the two thousand I men Just landed l?ac?k in their horaoJ land? Our Government lots us know very little about What it is doing in providing for humane, just, decent treatment of these men respecting • their absorption by the coimnnnitv. We have only felt the war from the inconveniences caused by the absence of the brave boys who have gone to face the Germans; we do not like to be disturbed from our money-making and enjoyment of the prosperity with which we are surrounded, but that is merely the attitude taxon by men fu former ages, and history convicts them of the most damning cruelty callousmss ST. d greed. Histow which rcerrds the treatment of so 1 dims after j previous wars has gi, C n the most I deadly sting to the utterances cf paci- I fists, pro-Germans and agitators cf revolution amongst Brit'sh people during the war. We enthusiastically passed laws in our Parliament which compelled men to risk their lives and bear all the rigours of the bittevst war ever known on earth, are vve <r o . ing to magnanimously adopt laws that will allow them to bc£ for a living when they return as happened i n vtovi'ous groat wars, in the last groat war in which the Empire was fighting for existence and freedom? Will the

| country imprison, or put to death, the ( wives of men. who have given their lives for the protection of that country* if they are caught stealing food for the children the .country is callously allowing to starve? We read such things without thinking that such things can happen in these enlightened days, but can they not? The monument of past wrongs may loom so largely and threaten as it will to crush us; history may proclaim the execrable conditions under which oldtime heroes at i°nnd rest in a pauper’s grave; we may i recoil from irrefutable accusations of | the past that strike us with stagger- ' ing force, but what are we really doing to render similar conditions impossible again when enthusiasm over the war abates and cools? We have the records fresh before us, indescribably painful, of battles, and raidings of the bloody triumph of men and . heroes; of lives profligately sacri- ‘ ficed that dowagers may continue to j dance under diamonds and earls glitter in their folly and mockery. The '.most fearful chapter in a book on social injustice w r ould be the history of judicial cruelty. While our heroes are returning to us let us resolve that a re- ' petition of history shall be rendered impossible, it is our barest duty to do that at least. If we needed a compendious illustration of the wrongs of the British people, the history of war furnishes all w r e could ask ,for. We claim to bo fighting for honour and freedom, for the right to live, to work out our own destiny, shall we refuse or fail to put these virtures into fullest operation in dealing with our returned soldiers. It cannot be truthfully denied that we .are lax in preparing for the reception of the huge number of men -who are already commencing to reach our shores. We, from time to time, hear men complaining most, bitterly that if they desire to avail themselves of land they arc compelled to go into a strange district, to leave their friends and kindred who could and would help them if land was available in their own district. This is the commencement of conditions similar to those disfiguring our Empire’s history, to which we have drawn attention. Settlement of soldiers should be the subject of’a comprehensive scheme,, and that-scheme-should :be im operation : now. < Our rulers have told us that a crushing burden of taxation is coming that imay ruin many who now consider themselves rich, and they state that the only way to avert it is by more and more land settlement and by doubling, and redoubling indefinitely our volume of production. (With, crushing taxation of , land very many farmwms now .passing rich 'would |be compelled to sell , when money was in nbnoral appreciation, . Are w r c going to allow the question of soldier” settlement to driftytpjl such times, come upon us ?