THE PENSION SCANDAL IN OUR VILLAGE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—This information may be of use to one of your corre- spondents. We are not a community of yokels, but for the most part of up-to-date mechanics, by way of being ardent politicians, perfectly capable of filling up papers and signing our own names. We have living in the village, and never absent from it, an excellent local representative of the War Pensiens Committee; but the shadier applicants knew a trick worth two of that. I was dealing not with theories but with facts. I endeavoured, too, to make it clear that I excluded wounded or maimed soldiers, or any real sufferers through the war, and pointed only to a few of the iniquitous cases. "Pension " was used as a generic term, inclusive of everything cognate. The war allowance was the greater scandal, both by reason of the fraud and because of the millions of pounds that have been squandered, and that have by their gradual auto- matic withdrawal undoubtedly been a factor in the, present unrest. It is not in human nature not to kick at giving up affluence, especially at a time when provisions have risen enormously in price. In the early months of the war, long before provisions and wages had got higher, the most respect- able people would do this. They would put down that their son allowed them fourteen shillings a week for hoard. We knew it was a falsehood. But we could not prove it. All we could do was to warn against misstatement. An official from a distance would visit the place periodically, and, as almost a total stranger, examine into the cases in batches of ten or twelve on a visit. He was up against an insoluble problem. And so the game went merrily on. How could a boy give nearly double his wages to his parents for his board ?—I ai
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