The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, MAY 2. A GRAVE SITUATION.

Taihape Daily Times, 2 May 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, MAY 2. A GRAVE SITUATION.

(■With which ife incorporated The Tadtape Po«t end Walciarlio News).

The provision of land for settling the j men in civil occupations who are returning from the various arenas of | war in Europe, Asia and Africa, is be- | coming a bitter question one end j of this Dominion to the other. News- j papers of every political shade are protesting against the inept-muddling j methods of the Government and its j repatriation schemes. Men who have | been compelled to sell their land and go into camp, to fight that the country’s lands might bo saved from Teutonic raiders and swashbucklers, have to face insurmountable difficulties in getting a piece of land to work on now that they have returned. Young and middle-aged soldiers in this district have fought for their country and they have returned to find that after doing their duty they are to suffer exile by a Government that seizes the ruling | sceptre on the plea that its existence j is necessary for securing justice to j the men now coming home. The re- | turning men presumably fought for j justice, but arc they receiving the j quality of that justice from the Gov- | eminent for which they fought? They j return from the horrors of war to be rewarded with exile from their district. ; friends and relations; and there arc j abundant cases on record that men | after travelling weeks and months j looking for suitable land amongst that \ the Government has made available j return depressed, disappointed, chag- j lined, and hopeless of ever getting on j to a farm again. Young men' who have j spent the best part of their working I lives on land, men who are anxious | to throw off every vestige of militar- | ism and what it stands for, are wan- j dering over the face of our New Zea- | land soil looking for a piece of land ! on which they can feel satisfied a | home can be made, but failure seems to j be a part of the settlement scheme, { if scheme it can he called. City news- j papers are asking whether soldier j settlement under the “Discharged Sob { diers’ Settlement Act/” is not a snare j and a delusion. Why need they ask \ for they all proceed to prove conclu- j sively and right up to the hilt that [ Soldier Settlement is nothing more j than a scheme of sham and pretence. We have the amazing situation of a Government making the cold, hard statement that the men do not want the laud, that returning soldiers will not go on. the land, but we are impelled I to ask “will a fish swim.’ ’ For when , fish of their own volition refuse to | move in their natural element, then, and then only, will it he possible for j men to have any doubt about soldiers accepting farms that they can make a living from. In this district there are hundreds of thousands of acres of land that should be available' for settlement at a price that returned men could pay and still be able to work to ample profit, but Taihape soldiers must suffer banishment from the scenes of their young life and be exiled amongst strangers if they risk themselves upon what Government only has thought! it their duty to provide_ It is as th<s “Auckland Star” says, the vital hoinf is whether the present land policy is!

economically sound; is it getting thel

men on the land in sufficient numbers to strengthen the economic position 7 Is not the need for increased production too grave to permit of halting ano tinkering? Are we going to put our soldiers on land bought at war-inflated prices under which they are to stagger along until they collapse under the’ inhuman burden, and their abandoned farms fall back into the hands of the Government to be sold again to thoso to whom they originally belonged at a fourth the price Government paid for' them? Well may the “Auckland Stax*” ask whore the soundness is of a system;

which turns genuine farmers into land speculators, which merely brings about swapping and aggregation, reducing rather than increasing the number of settlors on the land, rather reducing the volume of production than increasing it. The “Star" - Isays', th:el!

waste of war is an economic spectr? lurking behind even the prosperity oft a food-producing country, and the only means we have of saving ourselves from this (Spectre is to increase the national output by closer settlement of the land. The “Star's:’ opinion is that it is not yet too late' for the success of a bold scheme. Soldiers must bo got on to the land, not in scores or huudrers, but in thousands. A sturdy yeomanry will not be forthcoming by enslaving soldiers to mortgagees for life; production will not be increased and this country will have failed in its duty to the men who fought that it might be free. Tbe cloud of taxation hanging over this laird is black, heavy, and low, what are we doing to render ourselves immune from the depression, privation and bankruptcy with which it is densely fraught ? To attempt to make the masses pay by indirectly increasing their burdens, which means still further increasing prices of the necessaries of life, is to invite a collapse of the social status which is already fn a shaky condition, and can the farnijing community afford to carry tiro new burdens in addition to the old on the volume of their present production? Wo doubt it very much, but why pro-

dueors are not nervously striving to have their limited army increased to meet the augmented forces of taxation

that are marching against them is positively unintelligible. What is going to befall the business community if by taxation their earnings are to be drawn upon, and at the same time the spending power of the producers and the men they employ is to be disastrously lessened -There are thoussands of acres of excellent land in the Taihape district that the Oovcrnmen; might acquire for closer settlement, and yet our returned Taihape men arc callously offered pumice laud which

cannot bo made remuneratively pro-

ductive in less than ten years. Will our business people and our farmers still disregard what is bringing! about a distinctly disadvantageous state of affairs, when by organisation and bringing pressure to bear in the right quarter they might solve the production, the taxation, as well as the repatriation problems, which are admitted 1o be the three gravest issues

that are now threatening.