The New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association, 1916 - 1923

Abstract

About 4 p.m. on 5th August, 1914, the Prime Minister, Mr. Massey rose in the House of Representatives to announce that Great Britain was at war with Germany, and to move for parliamentary approval of the steps taken by the government to prepare an Expeditionary Force. Expressing the hopes of all his fellow New Zealanders, Mr. Massey optimistically predicted that the war would not last long, and that "within a very few months the Imperial authorities will be able to announce that peace with honour has come to the British Empire". The Leader of the Opposition, Sir Joseph Ward, avowing that at such a time there was no room for division of opinion, promised full support to the government. The following year Ward and his Liberals joined Massey and the Reform Party to form a national government. Loyal citizens no doubt felt stirred by these warmly optimistic statements and New Zealand entered a war which many thought must surely be over by Christmas. However, the war lasted four years. During those four years New Zealand provided 220,368 men and nurses for overseas service, of whom 91,941 were volunteers. Of these 16,688 died on active service leaving over 90,000 who had to be reabsorbed into civilian life after returning home. After the only other war to which New Zealand had sent troops overseas, the South African War, only 6,500 had to be reabsorbed into civilian life - a mere handful as it were. The ninety thousand of World War I, of whom 58,004 had been wounded, were to provide the government and people of New Zealand with a new problem, for the country had had no previous comparable experience, as it had in 1939, on which to base a repatriation programme. New Zealand had sent away over a hundred thousand of its fit young men and had learned during four years of war how to maintain a high level of production without their help. Women had stepped into some of the vacant places, particularly in the government service and in factories. Although many soldiers found their old jobs waiting for them when they returned a place had to be found for many of the ninety thousand who came back, particularly for the disabled men. The soldiers returned to a country which had prospered financially from the war in which they had suffered and in which they had seen so much suffering. They came back to a strongly competitive society in which the cost of living, and the price of land, was soaring with little hindrance from government control. They had to educate a public, who knew little about war, in its responsibilities to the men who had fought to defend it. This thesis will attempt to discover what these returned soldiers did to help solve their own problems, and to help their badly disabled fellows and the dependants of those who had died on active service, as well as what the government and the people of New Zealand did to help them from 1915 to 1923.