SOLDIERS' ALLOWANCES.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 March 1919, Page 2

SOLDIERS' ALLOWANCES.

RETROSPECTIVE AMENDED SCALE DEMANDED. » By Telegraph. —Press Association. Wellington, March 21. Mr. D. Seymour, general secretary of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Associaton, publishes a statement in reference to the application of the amended scale of allowances to soldiers' wives and children. There is, he says, a general impression that the demands of the association have been met by the Government, but nothing of the kind has been done and the association intended to press for retrospective payments in full of the allowances to the children of those who volunteered in the early part of the war. The early volunteers, he says, went cheerfully and did not begrudge unavoidable hardships, but where it was possible to do something towards equitable treatment the Government had contested every inch and yielded only to pressure. For a year they had contended in the effort to maintain that the country could not afford to treat the voluntce as generously as the conscript. Next, while allocating some £2,000,000 for gratuities, only some £450,000 of this could be spared "in lieu of retrospection" to satisfy the claims of justice. This had been increased to £500,000, not to fulfil moral obligations, but presumably to provide a better line of defence against full satisfaction of the principle involved. The last position had been reached and the association looked to the public and the press to support it in the demands on behalf of the children of ■ volunteer*,