CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 September 1917, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

HELP FOR THE SOLDIER-SETTLER. The agricultural correspondent of the New Zealand Herald, a paper which is Is usually a stalwart defender of the present Administration, has sonio straight words to say on the subject of the unsatisfactory State provision for returned soldiers who have taken up farming. At Tirau, on the WaikatoRotorua railway line, lie met a number of returned soldiers who had recently been settled on the land by the Government. With the land they had little fault to find, but "what is the good of land to a man if he has not capital to work it?" was the question that met the writer everywhere. One man had a considerable area of grass going to waste because he had not enough money to buy stock. The soldiers-settlers wero unable to get money from the Government, and as for private assistance, they found that none of the big auctioneering firms would give tliem stock on credit. "Land, after all, is only the rough material," the Herald man made comment; "it is to the farmer what rawwool or cotton is to the manufacturer. To make land produce 'wealth requires machinery in the shape of stock, fencing, buildings, implements. At a time like this, when every pound of 'butter-fat, every carcase of mutton, or lamb, or jtiecf, is worth so much money in the -markets, land capablo of producing these things should not be lying idle. In Great Britain and in most of the old settled countries, where farms are fully equipped in the matter oi fences, drains.

buildings, it is considered that from £.3 to £lO per acre is needed for working capital; Low much mora capital then is needed to deal with the partly-im-proved, poorly-equipped holdings which the State is offering' to returned soldiers and other settlers in New Zealand." Mr. Masscv declared that the Dominion had never been more prosperous than it is to-(lay, and no doubt that remark is true if we qualify it by application to the food-producing and trafficking sections of the. community, but there is obviously need for immediate attention to the ■financial needs of the men who have done their share' of fighting for the country. If plenty of money is available—and wealth is being piled up throughout New Zealand—why this tardiness in affording the moneyless cxsoldier a fair chance to make his way on the land?