PROTECTING RESERVISTS' BUSINESSES.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 October 1918, Page 4

PROTECTING RESERVISTS' BUSINESSES.

The annual report of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce urged thai provision should be made for the protection of trades, businesses, or professions of men who are called up for military service, and the Council of the Chamber is continuing to impress upon the Government that men should not, in addition to being compelled to leave their country to fight for its very existence as a part of the Empire, have complete financial ruin thrust upon them. Responsibility for protecting such reservists' interests rests largely with the National Efficiency Board; ideas promulgated are right in precept, but can they, or are they put into practice in fulfilling the purpose they aim at? Several cases have come under notice in Taihape, and there is one at the present moment that is so fraught with seeming injustice and cruelty as to cause uneasy feelings in any judicially-minded person We have seen a Taihape business drop in only a matter of weeks from being, one of the most lucrative of its kind in the town to one that is worse than valueless only for the certainty all along felt by the owner that he could not pass the military medical test, and would therefore soon return to it The family of which this reservist is a member consists of three sons of military age; in .the early stages of ; the war it was an understanding that the one now in camp could not pass the medical test owing to leg damage by accident, and the other two enlisted; one fought through Egypt and Gallipoli and went to France, where the European winter brought on respiratory troubles that made him totally unfit for ' military duty, and he was sent home; the other boy is still at the front, and there is no suspicion that the last of the family wishes to avoid a fit man's' responsibilities. His own opinion about fitness he sinks in face of what the medical ■ examiners decree, but he, in all reason, asks that in addition to becoming a soldier he is not forced into total financial ruin. It is such cases that the Wellington Chamber of Commerce urge full provision should be made for. Aro the people who stay behind, making huge profits out of their own businesses and living in comfort and luxury, so unmindful of the sacrifices they are enforcing upon fighting men that it becomes essential in the name of common humanity for such bodies as the Wellington Chamber of Commerce to enter upon a special campaign in the reservists' interests and for their common right? It is anxiously hoped that the Authorities will see that there are no miscarriages of justice of the kind in question, and that callousness and indifference will not result in covering the non-fighting stay-at-home community with shame. An injustice to one is the concern of all.