The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1919 A THREATENED REVOLT

Taihape Daily Times, 25 February 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1919 A THREATENED REVOLT

(With which ia incorporated The Taihape Port £J»d WalEJail'ao News).

The Soldier Settlement question' in Canada has developed to a condition of desperation. The alarming intelligence was cabled from that country yesterday that a great meeting of the war veterans had carried a resolution to inform ...the Government that the soldiers would forcibly take possession of all desirable lands within the short period „of thirty days unless land grants were made to waiting returned soldiers, in the meantime. The masses of the people in Canada are undoubtedly behind the soldiers ; just as returning New Zelanders are backed and will continue to Be backed by the people ' of this country. What particularly concerns New Zealanders is the fact that what may transpire in Canada is also liable to trnspire in this Dominion. In Canada returned soldiers are hot being insulted and treated as dogs, their chief complaint is the cruelty of delay in dealing with their claims to land. The degree of desperation the Canadian soldiers are_ worked up to by the unsatisfactory handling of their claims for land is discovered in the short time limit of thirty days allowed their Government before all laws and regulations are disregarded and they forcibly take possesison and set about putting the sections they occupy into a producing condition. In Canada there is the cry of producrion and still more production, and yet no steps have been taken so far to do anything that can result in increased production. Precisely similar conditions prevail in New Zealand, and while statesmen and politicians are howling about increased production to save the country from revolution or repudiation worse than nothing is being done to secure more production. No provision of a passably busineslike nature has been made or set in motion for absorbing the men who have fought for the land, and who probably succeeded in turning the scales of victory against the Hnu aggressors. Will New Zealand soldiers submit any more tamely to shameful treatment than the Canadians? That there is extreme dissatisfaction! amongst our returned men the undercurrent of rumblings unmistakeably indicate. The Returned Soldiers' Association is finding it imperative to become a political organisation in order to force attention to their just claims, and to insure some semblance of keeping of promises made to them by Parliament and people when they threw their lives into the balance against Gcrmiany. Those at the helm of the soldiers' problem seem to have no conception of the task before them; it is not one of those nice, easy commissions with huge pay and little work, and they do not understand jt. They are nonplussed, floundering, inanely looking round, inquiring of anybody and everybody what it is best to do. They are neither organisers nor businessmen, for their purchases of land for soldier settlement completely clinches that fact, j and their latest emanation for soldier settlement seems to fully justify some such course the Canadians have found it necessary to take if they are to have any land at all. 'A meeting of returned soldiers at Ashburton discloses the impatience that a dooolicy and procedure has brought about. The opinion was un--1 animously expressed that the methods of the Lands Department were not conducive to' the settlement of soldiers, and the meeting decidd to ask the Commissioner for Crown Lands to state definitely whether returned soldiers with little or no capital were to participate in the land

settlement scheme ag had been stated On various occasions through the columns of Dominion newspapers. This question has been anticipated by the Department, and measures are being taken to acquire for soldiers who have nothing land that is worth nothing, and following this to a logical conclusion the lives the men offered for their country were wortb nothing. For, to put men on to land, such as that from Rotorua to Taupo at two pounds an acre would be a most inhuman act of cruelty. There are thousands of acres ot -this land no sane person would occupy at any price and to put men without a very large purse upon it would certainly mean slow starvation. It must be understood that there is pumice land and pumice land. The country in from Putaruru has little resemblance fo that between Rotorua and Taupo. After a few years of cultivating and -fertilising. Jand at Putaruru can be farmed to profit, but no man on earth can estimate the time and the expenditure that would be required to render the Botorua-Taupo land of any value at all for increasing , the country's production. The intentions of those who are advocating the settlement of soldiers on such land are open to grave question. "We know that the eyes of that land have been picked out at any price speculators cared to give the Government for it, and we consider that it is merely exploitatation of our returned heroes to put them 'on this land at two pounds an acre ,which was probably acquired at two shillings an (acre. Other huge blcoks of this laud were acquired from the native owners by speculators; in fact, there is no neighbourhood 'in the Dominion where speculation in worthless land has-been more rife. When the pumice Lands around Rotorua might have been acquired from the natives by bona, fide settlers for bona fide settlement, the speculator mopped it. up arid- effectually shut the settler out, and now th.jrc is lan eftVt to pass the very worst areas of pumice land, that between Rotorua and Taupo, on to 'returned soldiers at a huge profit. If Canadian soldiers were treated as it is ;propo,sed to treat New Zealand f(.ld'.«rs- no one ear- marvel at their decision to ■ take possession of suitable land regardless of legal permission. In ithtis Rotcrua-Taupio proposal the Government is going from one extreme of madress to the other. Hitherto the land for each soldier settled has cost the State £5760, land now it is proposed to put soldiers on to 'and at £2 an acre—if they will go. It would be reasonablei to nssnine that. every ten ~e-

turned men would desire to go on the land; but to make 15,000 producers out of 100,000 men would cost the State, at the present cost per' soldier, no less than £93,000,000. The truth is the Government, from fear and incapacity, is incapable of dealing with soldier settlement, the scheme for which should have been, worked out long ago. There are not wianting evidences that the country is drifting on to rocks of one kind or another, and 'ihe a general election is held the sooner will there be security from the worst that can happen to any country. Canadian returned soldier's are not experiencing fulfilment of promises made to them; their Government is not playing the game according to rules it laid down, and the soldiers have notified that if promises are not made good in thirty days they will themselves take possession. Here are all the elements for a civil war in Canada; if the soldiers take possession will the Government bring military force to eject them? Whether the Canadian soldiers are successful or otherwise, will New Zealand soldiers follow the Canadian example, and if so, what will happen? It seems that the old spirit of greed is risking a waiting policy to sec what will happen, and the result may not prove just to their liking. The people are justified in raising their voices against the nearness of revolution being made still nearer. If the Government were going to work with the deliberate intention to link returned soldiers up with Bolshevism they could not desire more ready means than those they are so foolishly and unjustly employing. Are there no strong men in the Government able to handle the soldier settlement question in an honourable, capable manner, and so lavoid any possibility of resort to lawlessness?