108 RETURNED SOLDIRES AND SETTLEMENT. 
RETURNED SOLDIERS. 
In the ‘‘ Balance-sheet of a Normal Kauri Forest ”’ above it will be 
noted that one-third of the pay of the local forest stafi is considered 
debitable to the Military Department (p. 97). It is assumed that New 
Zealand will copy the forest organizations which have proved so successful 
on the Continent of Europe, where the forest statt fits into the mihtary 
organization of the country as a corps d’elite of guides and pioneers. 
The opportunity which is now offered to New Zealand for the formation 
of such a forest service, with a number of more or less invalided soldiers 
on its hands, is unique. There will be many returned soldiers without 
the taste or abilitv for settling on the land as farmers, but who could 
be settled on the land in the Forest Department, either as officials or 
permanent labourers, with just as much work as they were able to accom- 
phish. Indeed, it seems doubtful at this juncture which has the strongest 
claims on the country—the forest or the returned soldiers. Happily the 
presence of one offers a unique chance of doing justice to the other. This 
subject is discussed in “‘ Forestry Policy,”’ and at pp. 45 to 48 of my 
‘* Australian Forestry ’’ (Perth, 1916). 
There is a wide field for the employment of soldiers as daily-paid men 
in the great work of roadmaking and forest development which must be 
put in hand as soon as New Zealand determines to turn its forests to 
account as in Kurepe. There would be work of all sorts here—the heavy 
work of roadmaking, timber-felling, ring-barking, and grassing; the 
lighter work of teamsters, sawyers, planting, and hand or disc mulching, 
and some quite light work in the nurseries. In what follows it will be 
seen that there is much light work which partially disabled soldiers could 
undertake—work which is done by women and children on the Continent 
of Europe, greatly to the benefit of their health and physique. English 
habits and prejudices will prevent them taking to this work at once in 
New Zealand, so that in the meantime there is here a chance for dis- 
abled soldiers. Light work out-of-doors and in the country offers to dis- 
abled soldiers their best chance of renewed health aud strength. 
TIMBER PLANTATIONS AND SETTLEMENT. 
_ Perhaps the saddest of the mistakes made in the Government planta- 
tion is the social one—absence of land-settlement. It will be discussed 
later under “‘ Policy.’’ The branch of the New Zealand “ mixed ’’ forest 
on the extreme southern coast of Africa, Knysna, supports a white 
population at the rate of one family per 100 acres, The forest is 
in poor order, the support insufficient, but the population is wedded to 
the soil, and efforts to remove some of them have failed. The Germans 
spend some £7,000,000 yearly in wages to men working in the culti- 
vated forests. They work half of the year in the forests and half on 
their farms. But such forest colonization has been missed entirely in 
New Zealand. After twenty years’ working and the sinking of two 
millions the Government timber plantations are still dependent almost 
entirely on prison and casual labour. This state of things is good neither 
for the labour, for the cause of settlement. nor for the forest work, which 
is largely skilled work and benefits from a trained staff. | 
I have had a long experience (twenty-three years) with timber planta- 
tions and prison labour, I have found it Satisfactory up to a certain 
point, but, of course, it means losing the land-settlement. 
