Widening War Pensions
In the House of Commons last Tuesday it was generally recog- nised that the Government's recent White Paper on war pensions and allowances represented a large advance on the system as worked out in the previous Great War, and that in this it had, broadly speak- ing, the opinion of the country behind it. The public are naturally not versed in all the details of a very difficult and many-sided problem, but• they are aware of their debt to the fighting men, and wish to see .less haggling over its repayment. Yet to translate wishes into . deeds is not easy. One policy would be to go " all out," and to say that, just as under the Workmen's Com- pensation Act, an accident, no matter by whom caused, entitles to compensation, so during the period of war service any disability, however incurred, should entitle to pension or allowance. Another policy would be to stick to the jurisprudence of war pensions as hitherto established, whereby only such injuries qualify for pension or allowance as can be shown to have been at least partially 'caused by service. Both these extremes are logical, but no virtue neces- sarily rests in either of them. It may well be, and indeed that is how it turns out, that a half-way house avoids, on the one hand, the niggardliness and red-tape which had so incensed the public, and on the other that financial recklessness which it is as much the duty of Members of Parliament as the Government to resist. It is necessary to recall the obligation that rests on Parliament to ,consider both aspects of this problem. With Members subjected to pressure in one direction only, we shall probably see the slide to the " all out " position completed sooner or later. The objections to this are, of course, prudential. The decline in the birth-rate has produced and is producing a situation in which the proportion of pensioners to earners in this country twenty-five years hence will be such as no country has ever known hitherto. We ought not com- pletely to ignore that factor.
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