The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1918 THE REPATRIATION SCANDAL.

Taihape Daily Times, 7 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1918 THE REPATRIATION SCANDAL.

(With which is lncnrpnrared '7‘M Taihnpe Pout Lad Warm-an-m Nnwa).

The returned soldier question is progressing on lines predicted in these columns on several occasions recently. A Board of Repatriation has been appointed which should have the effect of surfeiting the community with everything pertaining to selfappointed National Governments. A large proportion of the present National muddling body appear to be pooh-bahs; they consider themselves supremely divined to perform the most exacting and widely varying administrative tasks, not a. very dangerous mental affection so long as UnderSecretaries and experienced Departmental officers can do much to keep them from making themselves ridiculous. Necessity has arisen for the appointment of a Minister to oversee a department that has had no previous existence ,and the Cabinet room, it is reported, was a bear garden, and the trouble was ended and the disputants appeased by making them all Ministers of the Department in t question, which is that of Repatriation; and now the soldiers and patriotic societies are anxious to know whether in repatriation operations the Ministers will agree and become a more reasonable group outside the Cabinet room than they were inside it. The Act lof Parliament governing repatriation, which is so long delayed that the thought had arisen it might never come at all, is so unworthy of its title that it hardly, permits criticism as a repatriation measure. If anyone with common sense of justice accepts it, it will be because they are so disgusted with it, and realise the futility of getting anything at all of a workable character from the stale, unnatural political hotch-potch the country has to put up with for another twelve months, if, in the meantime, exasperated war heroes, on finding how the political land lies when they come home, do not take a hand at government as soldiers equally badly provided for in other lands are doing, -and are threatening to do. Are the souls of the people as well as the souls of the Government so dead that . they cannot realise their obligations to the men who for four years have jeopardised their health and life in fighting for a presumably ungrateful country. Ministers, not excepting the Prime Ministers, publicly state that justice ! cannot be done to the returning men ! owing to the money it would require. In reply to the Prime Minister's reference to the cost of justice for the men, one member suggested that as we had been schooled to think in millions for destruction of life, people might be taught to think in millions for the preservation of life. While one soldier suffers from want of recognition of his rights no miserable talk about cost should prevent the people rising on his behalf against the men who did not hesitate to conscript life. The Advisory Board of Patriotic Societies condemn the Government's repatriation proposals as "Farcical and fatal." Members of that Board fully realise the delay and inefficiency that must arise from having four Ministers iof the Crown to manage repatriation, delay that can only result in repatriation chaos, and the soldiers are to be the victims of a political family squabble. Members of the Patriotic Board stigmatised Cabinet's action as scandalous, and Nothing more than sham; one questioned whether there was a man in Parliament that had the organising ability to successfully carry such a scheme out; another stated the Government had failed on every important question, and therefore a general election should be held, which was generally applauded. The Patriotic Advisory Board were of opinion that before Regulations uiTffer the Repatriation Act wer brought into force they should be submitted to the Board and to the Returned Soldiers' Association. The attitude and promises; the mysterious up-the-sleeve business of the Minister of Defence, was jeered at and ridiculed. Inconsistencies in the Bill were referred to as what could only bo expected from quite incapable men. Soldiers who manfully volunteered and who have fought through the war are by the Act made incapable of the privileges and benefits that later, conscripted men are to enjoy,'because the Prime Minister thinks uniform justice would require too much money there is parsimony in administering justice but the Government cannot be charged with any want of liberality when only ; the life of the flower of our land was

needed in fighting- for international j justice. We trust that history will j never be written which states that while returned soldiers were uncared for and unjustly treated by their Government the people did nothing on j their behalf. We are urged to incul- ' cate and foster patriotism and love of I country in the coming generations, j while we are, by our actions, advocat- j ing and inviting the coming generations to sneer at our precept from the nature of the example we set them. This degrading question of money will operate until it has set class against class and man against man, and until another deplorable example is added to the many that a house divided against itself cannot stand. There are so many indefensible provisions in the molehill which the governing mountain has given birth to, some puzzling to all sense of common justice. Men in camp on twelfth November are to enjoy all the benefits conferrable by the Discharged Soldiers' Settlement Act, but all men discharged prior to that date are debarred from participation. The Second Division League has discussed the Four-Minister Repatriation Scheme and the Act under which they are to operate, and that organisation is glad and gratified to know that the Patriotic Advisory Board as well as mem- i bers of Parliament in the House during the discussion of the measure were practically unanimous l in condemnation of the Ministerial fourcornered board. From every shade of political opinion comes condemnation of the National Government's laxity in having welllaid schemes in readiness for absorbing our returning braves into civil life. The course the Government is taking, which is one of taihoa and' drift, of exigency and incapacity, is likely to prove disastrous to hundreds and thousands of good men who have had years of military life and, more than ever are now entitled to every care and consideration in a sane and generous process of winning them back to a life of usefulness, turning them into as

grand citizens as they have been glorious soldiers, as brave and true in civil life as they have undoubtedly been in their military life. Will mothing better than nawying on roads and railways which the Repatriation Bill only, in its limited scope, provides for, snatch and wean these men of free, strenuous, striving lives against a cruel, common, enemy of mankind, from their roving, somewhat devil-may-care existence and make them into good citizens, or will it breed a scorn and contempt that is most likely to result in adding to industrial and social disintegration that .already hangs heavily overhead? The people of New Zealand are desirous that no stone should be left unturned in doing what is right by our soldiers; it is only a few money-grubbers that are pulling strings that will bring further shame to the National cheeks.