WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 March 1919, Page 3

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

SOLDIERS' SETTLEMENT. WIDESPREAD DISSATISFACTION. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, March 3. Unless the Government's soldier settlement scheme is much maligned it is falling far short of what was expected from it by Parliament and the country. This, happily, is not a party question and critics of all political colors and sympathies are complaining bitterly and loudly of the failure of the authorities to place more attractive propositions before the potential settlers now returning from the front in considerable numbers. They have had two or three years to prepare for the demands bow being made upon their resources and yet scarcely less could have been done had they had only as many months. Land —good, bad and indifferent—has bee; offered to them in abundance, but the machinery of the Purchase Board lias worked so slowly and so erratically that many settlers who were anxious to quit their properties and not seeking exorbi-. tant prices preferred to go elsewhere for I their market.

A BLIND ALLEY. On paper the terms offered by the Government to the intending soldier settler are reasonable enough. He may have a choice of locality, of land, of tenure and almost of price. But in practice the scheme does not work out so smoothly a-s all this might be taken to imply. A returned man may wish to r-cquire ft piece of private land by agreement, as provided by the Act, or lie may wish to take up a section of Crown land. He makes his wish known to the Department and he is received with open arms, so to speak. Another addition to the Minister's list of returned men settled on the land is in sight and everything seems to be going as merry as a marriage bell for a month or two. Then difficulties begin to arise. The private acquisition is fin desirable or the Crown land is not ready for settlement. This determination is reached in four or five months, perhaps, six or seven, and in the end the applicant gives up his enterprise in disgust. SQUARE HOLES AND ROUND. This is not the case with one or two applicants only, but with scores. Very naturally the Department, for financial and other reasons, prefers to settle meit on land it already has purchased. Some of this ldfid, as was inevitable, is too high in price or too low in quality and the officers of the Department are overinclined to look at the whole business rather from tho seller's point of view than from the buyer's. But it stands to reason that the man who understands anything about land knows what he wants much better than do the officers of the Department, and it is obvious that the man who does not understand is the last person in the world who should be put upon dear or unsuitable land Yet in spite of the reasonable and the obvious the proportion of surrenders is mounting up at a tremendous rate and there is a grave danger of many thousands of potential settlers being lost to the State.

WHAT IS WANTED. Tho blame for what is happening will fall as a matter of course upon the members of the National' Government, individually and collectively, but really it is the system and its lack of elasticity that are mainly at fault. With one or two notable exceptions the high officers of the Land Department are elderly gentlemen whose years of association with red tape and stilted routine have deprived them of initiative and enterprise and left them with an extravagant regard for the scanctity of rules and regulations. The members of the Purchase Board, cautious and conscientious to a fault —if that is possible—are the worst offenders of all in this respect. They move so slowly that many of the best of the opportunities that come their way are lost. What is wanted, in the opinion of practical people with a knowledge of the facts, is the creation of a new department for this class of settlement with a live, capable man at its head and administered with the single purpose of promoting the best interests of the soldier and the State.