SQUANDERED GRATUITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 February 1920, Page 8

SQUANDERED GRATUITIES.

CASES SEEN IN THE COURT. JUDGE'S CONDEMNATION, Some further remarks upon the number of returned soldiers being convicted of crime were made by Mr. Justice Chapman at the Auckland Supreme Court on Saturday. "I have just dealt with 12 prisoners," said his Honor. "The majority were sent here on pleas of guilty by magistrates. A very considerable number of them are men who have been previously convicted, and I am very sorry indeed to see that a considerable number are returned soldiers. The common experience in cases of returned soldiers brought here for sentence is that they have got t>rongh their gratuity with extraordinary rapidity, and, having eome to the end "of their resources, have committed some crime, generally stealing or forgery. lam afraid I cannot do anything room than cf.ll attention to this state of affairs. These men seem to have no difficulty in getting drink. The circumstance that thoy ore already in liquor seems to present no difliculty. I can only r-ay it is a deplorable state of affair!;, and it grieves me to see so many men who behaved most valoronsly at the war coming back here to live a life of drunkenness and dissoluteness until every shilling of their gratuity and war savings is gone." The Hon. J. A. Tole, Crown Prosecutor, i said he thought that the gratuities should not have been paid to the men without some sort of v control. His Honor said that the method of paying the gratuity had been fixed. Ho added that he hoped most of the soldiers were making good use of their money. In the Court tliey saw the minority—but there were far too many cases of the kind.