U.N. APPEAL FOR CHILDREN: WHAKATANE MEETING CALLED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 34, 2 April 1948, Page 4

U.N. APPEAL FOR CHILDREN: WHAKATANE MEETING CALLED

Next Tuesday night, April 6, at 8 o’clock a public meeting convened by the Mayor of Whakatane, Mr B. S. Barry, will form this district’s organisation to handle the United Nations Appeal for children. Meetings of a similar character are being held simultaneously by every Mayor in New Zealand with the idea of launching the appeal on a truly nation-wide basis.

This appeal is international. It has claims on the pockets of the selfish and the unselfish alike—because to let the children of Europe starve and suffer will ultimately hit back in the hatred the needy will develop for the well-fed, a hatred that could easily flare again into war, a war with a generation of bitterness behind it; because to let those children starve is inhuman while there is anything humanly possible that can be done about it.

Headquarters of the appeal point out that the children of today are the victims of a war that was not of their making. Millions are hungry, homeless, without the guidance and assistance of parents. Many carry the actual scars of a war that knew no distinctions between combatant and non-combat-ant.

The New Zealand United Nations executive pledges that the whole of the gross proceeds of the appeal will be placed at the disposal of the United Nations authorised spending and investigation committee, which has been set up to control the Children’s Appeal Fund.