SOLDIERS' GRATUITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1919, Page 7

SOLDIERS' GRATUITIES.

MEN GETTING IMPATIENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, March 7. Tho Minister for Defence has stated at Dunedin that Cabinet has decided to increase the grant for soldiers' gratuities in order to enable the Defence Department to make up to 3s per day the separation allowances of the wives of men who went away as volunteers at the time when the separation allowance was only Is a day. In other words, the Minister has decided at last to pay the. retrospective allowance demanded by the Returned Soldiers' Association. Two years have elapsed since the returned men first asked that the higher allowance paid to wives of soldiers in the later stages of the war should be made retrospective in the cases of men who enlisted in 1914, 1915 and 1916. The Minister has stated again and again that he could not consent to make the payment. He has advanced many good reasons for his refusal. But the persistence of the Association, backed by the opinion of many members of Parliament, has won the day. Returned men generally are getting impatient about the delay in the payment of the gratuities authorised by Parliament. The Minister is reported to have said at Dunedin that "the matter was not neglected and that he advised soldiers to exercise patience." But communications that are reaching the military authorities indicate that the men want some more definite information. Parliament approved of a sum of a million und a quarter being applied to the payment of gratuities, and the Minister stated at the time the basis on which the payments would be made. Returned men are asking that they should be given their money now, since it would assist them to establish iheir homes and start again in their trade.; and businesses. But Defence Headquarters can give no information to inquirers on this subject. It appears from the Minister's statements that the whole question is still under consideration.