WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 March 1917, Page 8

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

SOLDIERS' PAY. THE CIVIL SERVANTS' CASE. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, March 23. The Acting-Prime Minister returned the only possible answer to the deputation -which waited upon Mm to ask that the military pay and allowance of public servants called up for active seryice should be made equal to their civil pay. The difficulty lie saw, of course, was that it would be extremely unfair to grant this concession to public servants without securing a similar advantage to those in private employment. The members of the deputation based their appeal largely on a statement made by Sir James Allen himsdf IS mouths ago, in which he expressed a hope that employers would keep the recruits' places open for them, pay part of their salaries, and bear their general interests in view. But that was before the days of compulsory service, when employers could be asked to assist in making the voluntary system effective, and the whole position has changed since then. Now, the most the Minister could do for the deputation was to promise to refer its request to Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward When those gentlemen return to the Dominion.

COSTLY SAVING. Tho claim of the deputation that a great part of the money which would be required to provide civil pay for public sevants at the front would be obtained from savings, has loosened the tongues of a number of business men and others in regard to the various economies practised by tha : public ■ departments. One member of the deputation stated that tho places of the higher paid men at thejront were being filled by lower paid men and that in this way a-single department was saving £SO,Oob or £90,000 a year. First year cadets at £SO a year were doing thft work for which experienced men had been receiving £l5O a year. But no one pretends that the service is as well maintained by the inexperienced hands is it was by the .experienced hands, and as a matter of fact the public has contributed very materially in the way of ready sacrifice and patient sufferings towards the sitv;ngs. To ask it now to'pay a largelv increased sum for an inferior service is, as it has been put colloquially, a- little too strong.

| UNION RATES. Otii'er sections of the community, comprising most of the restless people, who for iack of a better term ate commonly known as Socialist, are rejoicing, perhaps a littlo prematurely, over the eonversion of the civil sen ants to the principle of union rates of pay for military service. They have 'been insisting all along that the soldier should ho paid a living wage, .according to the standards laid down by some of the ullra-progrefl-sivc members of the' House when" the Military Service Bill was passim* through 'Parliament, and they now are welcoming the civil servants as allies in the claim for right and justice. Baitprobably the civil servants would require a much more preciso definition of "union rates" than hag vet been given by the member for Lyttclton and the member for Grey before they accepted them as a satisfactory solution of the problem they submitted to the Acting Prime Minister. Already, married men at the front, when recent concessions are taken into account, are being paid practically what would be regarded as union rates at home.

SECOND DIVISION. - Judging from such particulars of the movement as have been published, the promoters of the Second Division League are venturing upon" a somewhat hazardous experiment. The purposes of the league, it seems from these particulars, are to secure uniformity of action and to place tho oi-gnnised views of its memmembers before the authorities. Just how far these purposes are subversive of military discipline it is for the Minister of Defence to say, but a high officer to I whom the subject was mentioned to-day expressed himself as much astonished at men already enrolled as soldiers contemplating the formation of a. "union" to bring pressure upon their lawful commanders, It was an innovation in military discipline that never had been attempted before and| ought not to be tolerated for a single .moment. Tho fact that tho Mayor is to preside at a meeting to be held in Wellington on Tuesday to form a branch of the league here auggests that the intentions of the promoters have been misunderstood, but at the moment thisVonly adds to the interest with which developments are bein'" awaited. °