THE PENSION SCANDAL IN OUR VILLAGE.

ONE of the drawbacks, or one of the advantages, of village life is the fact that, metaphorically speaking, we all live in glass houses. What in towns are secrets no man may guess become in villages matters of common knowledge. The smallest of gossip has a perennial attraction; indeed, we have no other intellectual pastime. We know exactly how Mrs. Samson came by her magenta skirt, and why little William Pye is always called Billie. Thereby hangs a tale ; but it will not interest the general public. The amount Jim Acres hands over to his wife every Saturday evening for the support of his home, and what he reserves out of his wages for himself for beer and tobacco, is hidden from nobody. Proclamation from the housetop should possess but little of terror for the villager, Vocalise he has been used to it from his youth up. He was born, so to speak, into a state of publicity.

It is commonly assumed that the villager has a different nature from that of the dweller in a town. There could not be a greater mistake. Human nature is much of a muchness, no matter what the locality, and under all possible differences of outward circumstances. Only in the village we have more precise knowledge of the data on which conclusions can be reached. It is the present writer's lot that he has been resident for more years than he cares to remember in a large villake, numbering about a thousand persons, on the borders of a town in the genial West ; and from his position he has had to sign, as witness, practically all the local application forms for war pensions and gratuities. It is most unlikely that we are exceptionally worse than other "people, and on general grounds one can be almost positive that what has happened here has happened everywhere else ; and if that is so, the wonder is, not that the war has cost so much, but that it has cost so little. The fact is, we thrive. We thrive exceedingly. We thrive upon unmerited gains. Never was there such a war ! Never was there such a Government ! The amounts showered down, by a timid or reckless Government, upon people who have no moral or legal title to any amounts at all, must be reckoned in the aggregate in tens of millions.

Of the sailors and soldiers who have been maimed in the war, or by the war have suffered business losses through their splendid patriotism, one does not speak. For them a grateful country can never do enough. Of the widowed mother who mourns the loss of the only son, her stay and hope and comfort, one also does not speak. She, too, deserves all she can get, and more than she can ever get, because so much is going to the wrong quarters. But if the Government were to revise the pension list, and withdraw the misdirected pensions, the resultant saving of tens of millions of now squandered moneys could be applied, if not to the relief of the over-burdened taxpayer, at any rate to the necessities or greater comfort of those in need who have a true claim upon their country.

Two factors have in the main contributed to our prosperity during the war and afterwards. The element of human nature, unconscious of the need of sacrifice, has been potent all through, simply because from our upbringings we have been taught no better. When the war began we who stayed at home were out to get all we could. It must be said that in our ignorance we looked upon the State as a fairy godmother. It must be said, too, that arithmetic on paper is one of our weak points. The case of Mrs. Robinson may be cited. It happened early in the war, before people had got wide awake. She was a widow, certainly in thin circumstances, because Tim, her middle-aged son, a ne'er-do-weel, battened on her. He joined up, and was guarding a railway tunnel a few miles off. Her paper, brought for witness's signature, was remarkable for an outrageous statement that Tim had given her 21s. a week previous to enlistment ! She obtained, however, a war-allowance that lighted up the whole of her face with a smile. Tim soon came home with a pension ; he opened a shop ; last spring he bought several cottages ; the pension, which he still draws, comes in most handy. Formerly without a penny to bless himself with, he is now a financier. That is the way we began doing things. Perhaps the Robinsons are exceptional, though that does not quite fit it, when everybody is in the same boat. There are many branches of them in the village, and all of them are equally in clover. On Sundays the difference between their dress and get-up and that of the squire is not discernible. And shag has given place to sixpenny cigars. So difficult are people to please that there is, indeed, some little local envy at the fortunes of the Robinsons. They are fine, strong-built men, not so much hard workers as dealers. One of them, after some months in the National Defence Force, has a pension of nearly 10s. a week. Besides this, lie has work at ls. 6d. an hour, or £3 10s. a week. Before the war he was very much down at heels. A brother of his has done even better. After short semi-military duty in a neighbouring county he has come home with a pension ; he is in receipt of the unemployment dole ; and he makes a good weekly turn-over as a general hawker. The strange thing is that, in spite of the scarcity and high price of provisions, we have got so much fatter and sleeker that our own mothers would hardly know us. Widows without sons and old-age pensioners have had, and have, a truly hard time of it ; but they are in the minority in our village. In the present writer's opinion, based on experience of facts, the number of families who gathered in sons, !adore their enlistment, from different counties and towns, for the purpose of getting war-allowances as their dependants, is nearly equal to the number of families in the village—the point being that these boys, having years ago gone away for good, possessed no other tie with the old home than that of sentiment and affection. We have managed things pretty well for country folks. A farmer here has been receiving a double war-allowance from the Government on account of two of his sons, day labourers in a distant Colony ! In our parts, perhaps, the most noteworthy effect of the war has been the quick-change reversal of the internal relationship of parents and sons. In pre-war days the sons were "on their own" or else a drag upon their parents ; on enlistment, all at once their parents became their dependants. This cheating, innocent enough when all things are considered, has been wholesale and widespread. Our most respectable families have all done it., and done it openly, without shame, and with a bristling at the back of their necks at any signs of hesitation on the part of the person called upon to witness their signature. When the present writer refuaed point-blank to sign, there was always somebody else, not so particular. Church, or Chapel, or nondescript., it has made no difference. Their natural observation has been : Why should we not get our rights the same as other people ? " Perhaps the explanation is, human nature in one of its aspects has been too strong for the State in the hour of peril. The result is that millions, tens of millions of pounds have been, and are being. thrown away in the shape of unmerited largess.

The GoVernment itself is the other factor in the situation. It connives at what but for that connivance would be fraudulent. It forces wrong descriptions upon people. It does not pay any attention to the plain meanings of plain English words. It passes negatives as affirmatives, and affirmatives as negatives. All this is sowing the seeds of a wrong morality ; it tends to engender cheating. On one occasion the writer filled up a form for a pension for a woman with truthful negatives where affirmatives were needed if she was to be entitled to any pension. She, however, got the pension right enough. The impression in the village is that it is the easiest job in the world to obtain a pension, and that the information given by the applicant on the application form has very little to do with the matter. One is almost forced to the same conclusion.

Besides, we have a village custom that it is the mother's place to apply for the pension ; the father always remains in the background, out of sight as much as possible. The father, the wage-earner, plays an insignificant part. This may be worldly wisdom. Great difficulty is always experienced in getting the woman to state the amount of her husband's wages; it has to be dragged out of her by diplomatic methods ; and not infrequently it is incorrect. There is something queer, too, about the fact that on the pension-paper the mother alone is recognized without any notice being taken of the father ; and that one of the questions on the form is : " Have you married since the pension was granted ?" "Oh, dear me, No," says the woman. Of course she has not, else she would be up for bigamy. But it makes no difference ; the pension comes regularly ; the Government is determined she shall not lose it.

The case of Mr. and Mrs. Levi Jackson, highly respectable people, affords a typical illustration of the, state of things here. Long before the war their children had left home, with the exception of the youngest son, an apprentice. The three daughters had got married and the four sons were away at work in distant places. However, as each son joined up, the parents got an allowance from the War Office on his account. The present writer does not know how these allowances were obtained, as he did not witness to the papers. When the youngest son, the apprentice, had to join up, an allowance was got on his account too. Unfortunately, the poor lad was killed soon after his arrival in France. Mrs. Levi Jackson, who is a perfectly honest woman, duly brought her Dependant's Application Form for a pension to the present writer as witness to her signature. The following conversation may throw light on matters : Myself : But this is a dependant's form !

Mrs. Levi Jackson : Yes.

Myself : But can you honestly say you are a dependant of -Bert ? You and his father kept him. He did not keep you. You used to tell me that the pittance he gave you did not near pay for his food, to say nothing about his clothes, and that it would be a relief to you when he went away from home, like your other sons.

Mrs. L. J.: That's true. I know I am not his dependant. But it says I am on the form. I'm sure I want to do nothing wrong. I want only what I'm entitled to.

Myself : Well, Mrs. Jackson, I don't want to do you out of anything. As you say, it's the same form all the others have got. So I suppose it's all right. But on the heading of the form it warns us against fraud of any description. So I'll just alter it. Anyhow, you'll be quite safe then.

Mrs. L. J.: Put down the truth, please. That's all I and his father want.

So the present writer wrote in large letters across the document :—

" Mrs. Levi Jackson is NOT a Dependant of Private Bert Jackson, and never was. She is NOT a widow, but lives with her husband, whose wages are £2 10s. a week, with cottage and

garden rent free. Her other war-allowances for other sons are so much. If she is entitled to anything, she deserves it."

In due course Mrs. Levi Jackson obtained the pension3s. a week for life. Of this as a compensation for bereavement no one would complain. The immorality consists in her getting It as a dependant, which she is. not. And why, if it is a bereavement compensation, irrespective of financial circumstances, should she be put to the repeated task of 'filling up an intricate form, and to the trouble of constantly telling the Government that she has not married again since the pension was granted, a thing she could hardly do without committing bigamy ?

Meanwhile Mr. Levi Jackson, who is equally concerned, and has a very tender heart, gets no pension at all from a grateful country. S.