Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JULY 2, 1942. REESTABLISHING THE SOLDIER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JULY 2, 1942. REESTABLISHING THE SOLDIER.

TT may have been only by a slip that Masterton was omitted from the list of centres in which local rehabilitation committees are to be set up, though this is very Jar from being the fiist occasion on which the AVairarapa has been passed o\ei in a most unjustifiable way by central and national authorities. So far as what are somewhat ineptly and unhappily called “rehabilitation” activities are concerned, however, it obviously would be preposterous to leave the Wairarapa out of account. The matter was at once taken up by the Mayor of Masterton (Mr T. Jordan) and a local committee no doubt will be established, perhaps with sub-committees in other parts of the district.

The local committees to be set up are to be definitely subordinate to the Rehabilitation Board —they are in fact to be an extension of its organisation into each local district. They will advise the board on employment, training, housing, financial assistance and other questions of interest and importance to members of the fighting forces resuming their place in civil life. To a great extent these activities of necessity will be conducted strictly in accordance with rules and standards laid down by the central board and much of the business involved, particularly as it relates to the affairs of individual returned men, of necessity will be confidential.

Work of this kind is and will be necessary and useful, but it may be hoped that the enterprise of the repatriation of the members of-our fighting forces will also be dealt, with from a broader standpoint, in association with the general question of industrial and economic development, in the Wairarapa and in other parts of the Dominion. Nothing will do more to facilitate the civil re-establishment in desirable conditions of the men who have fought for their country than enterprise directed wisely to the extension and expansion of useful economic activities of every kind —development, that is to say, including, but not by any means limited to, the establishment of a more varied range of industries.

The problems to be solved in fostering the vigorous economic growth which will give material security and at the same time open the way to moral and intellectual advancement need earnest, attention in districts like the Wairarapa, as well as from a national and an international standpoint. The hope is widely entertained that the sacrifices now being made by the free nations will enable mankind to enter a better and more enlightened era —an era of which. one feature will be the removal of needless and foolish restrictions on economic development and on the production and distribution of the material essentials of human welfare.

Wise enterprise in detail as well as in mass —in each town and district as well as in the shaping of national policy and in the regulation of trade between. nations —is needed if these aspirations are to be realised. At the same time, in. the extent to which these aspirations are realised, the re-establishment of our fighting men in civil life will tend to become natural and easy.

In the Wairarapa we evidently must have a Local Rehabilitation Committee. But we should be capable also, as a community, of building- up the organisation that will enable us to deal, from the broadest standpoint with questions of post-war economic development, aiming at results which will benefit not only the men returning from the war. to whom we owe so much, but the whole population, and not least members of the oncoming generation.