LOCAL FUNDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 June 1941, Page 6

LOCAL FUNDS

FOR RELIEF OF HARDSHIP AMONG RETURNING SOLDIERS OPPOSED BY MR JORDAN. AS CHAIRMAN OF NATIONAL COUNCIL. EXISTING SCHEME HELD ADEQUATE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A letter from Mr T. Jordan, of Masterton, chairman of the National Patriotic Council has been sent to all mayors and chairmen of local bodies, in reply to a circular letter addressed to them recently by Mr Mackie, Mayor of Te Aroha, urging that pressure be brought to bear on the Government, to allow one appeal for funds which could be controlled locally, to meet extreme and urgent cases of hardship among returning soldiers.

Mr Jordan states that this was one of the express purposes of the £1,000,000 appeal and in view of the money held by the provincial patriotic councils there is no cause for a special appeal at this juncture. The conference of patriotic bodies in May last year adopted unanimously a report of the special committee set up under the chairmanship of Mr B. J. Jacobs, VicePresident of the R.S.A., which recommended the setting up by patriotic councils in each town or centre of a rehabilitation committee, this to be provided with a special imprest account and the personnel to include members from the zone executive and the local R.S.A. branch. A uniform relief scale was set out. The virtues of this arrangement were its operation by a local committee, with local know-! ledge. It had all the provincial funds j behind it and even that of the National Patriotic Fund Board. In the last resort it is not limited by the amount raised in any particular area. It had the sympathetic representation of returned soldiers and its power for relief was instant, because a soldier might apply for relief anywhere in the Dominion, as a soldier of New Zealand and not of any particular district. The scheme was working smoothly and effectively in the Wairarapa district and, if not elsewhere, the fault was not with the scheme but with the places.