WELLINGTON NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 309, 8 June 1915, Page 2

WELLINGTON NOTES.

THE PATRIOTIC FUNDS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Juno 4. Wellington lias been in carnival mood during tlie last day or two. The .41 y lias itec-n given over to the patriotic committees, the collection boxes have been rattling day and night, and entertainment of every description has been provided as a means of coaxing the not unwilling shilling out ol the public poekeil. Tile big effort, so the authorities sav, is going to add anything fi-i.-in £30,000 to £50,000 to, ibe National Patriotic Fund, and Wellington is feeling pleased with itself in anticipation. The. community which is subscribing so huge a sum of money :s entitled to commend itself. And yet is it any wonder that the foreigner finds the British character hard to understand? AYe are entering the eleventh month of the Moodiest war in history. The Empire and its Allies are lighting mighty military Powers who ara glumly determined, to win and who lioM tenaciously the French and Belgian tsrritory they have won. In the face p[ this crisis we count our responsibilities so lightly that when money is needed for a national pip pose connected with the war, we set aJbout raising it l)y means of carnivals and other entertainments, instead of giving it willingly in the spirit of sober self-sacrifice that seems to fit the occasion. But the British people have ways of tlioir own. They ara not the less resolute because they continue, to wear a careless demeanor, and the main thing, after all, is to sec that the men and the money are produced as they arc required with a minimum dislocation of the ordinary life of the nation. Our chief (opponents, the (iermans, are by way of proving tint it is possible to take a war too seriou-'y.

lI'ROVISIOX POll THE WOUXDED. j It is rumored that a returning transport is bringing some of the Xew Zealand wounded from tihe Dardanelles, Imt the Defence Department, has'as yet no statement to make upon the subject. The general instruction to the officers commanding at the trout is to back as opportunity offers any wounded men who are unlikely to be able to rejoin .the forces, and one gathers that a considerable number of men who shared in the Dardanelles fighting will be here witihin the next few months. In the meantime the Minister of Defence and his advisers are tackling the pensions problem, which is proving a good deal more complicated than it was at first' realised to 'be. The initial problem is to devise a scale of pensions that will meet, tvs nearly as may be, the varying requirements of a large number of eases.; There will be many grades of incapacity among the men wbo have suffered per-, manent injury in consequence of wounds or disease, and the needs of special groups of dependents have to be considered. A careful study of the existing law is revealing certain anomalies, such as tihe omission to mjikc provision for the man who falls sick or suffers injury in a training camp or aboard a transport. The ifiinistcr of Defence has indicated that his own idea is that Xew Zealand should join with Australia in devising a scale of pensions suited to the conditions prevailing in the British dominions on this side of the world. He appears to assume that the Australasian pensions will be substantially higher that those paid by the Mother Country. If they should lie higher than the scale recommended to the House of Commons by a Parliamentary Committee some months ago they will be very liberal indeed.

\TA\IWARD WOULD-BE RECRUITS. Your correspondent listened the other evening to tillo complaint of a recruiting officer. The newspapers arc constantly receiving accounts of the grievances of the men who have registered and then failed to get called up, or who have, found their applications for registration neglected, or have encountered some other trouble, real or imaginary. It appears that there is anotJlier side to the case. Some of the recruits are extraordinarily careless and haphazard in their dealings with the Department. One. young man, for example, wrote an indignant note asking why he had not been .called into camp. The reason was that he had omitted to supply his postal address —and lie gave no address in his letter of complaint, so he is still without his order to report nt Trenthnm. Then there was the man who asked why lie was being kept waiting and had to be informed that he had cancelled his registration in a previous letter. Some of the enquiries that reach the recruiting offices are curious indeed. A married man, without children, wrote, stating that his wife was waiting for him to enlist and his employers had offered lo make nip his pay to the rate of the salary he is drawing now. He. wanted to be told whether or not it was his duty to enlist. And there is another man who lias made several attempts to enlist but has not yet been able to secure an enrohnent form, for the simple reason that he always fortifies himself against the ordeal on his way to the recruiting office and arrives in an exhilarated condition. The recruiting officer has troubles enough.