RED CROSS SOCIETY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24900, 13 June 1946, Page 2

RED CROSS SOCIETY

ANNUAL MEETING OF BRANCH “We have worked as hard as any voluntary body of men and women could have worked •to back up our war effort in evefry way,” said the chairman of the North. Canterbury Centre of the New Zealand Red Cross Society (Dr. J. Leslie Will) at the annual meeting of the centre held yesterday. Although we can justly take a great deal of pleasure and gratification in what we have achieved, it is so easy to adopt, in the more irritating times of the post-war period, an attitude of defeatism, and to think we are going to look after our own affairs now,’ ” Dr. Will continued. “Every endeavour ought to be made to keep the sub-centres together.*' Speaking of the financial position of the Red Cross, Dr. Will said it should be noted that the capital fund which they had in hand at the' end of the war was very little it any greater than that which they had started off with at the beginning of the war. There had been, throughout the country, from rime to time, the feeling that the Red Cross was using the war to collect money for its own purposes in peace time, said Dr. Will. The position of the capital fund was sufficient proof that this had not been the case. The honorary treasurer (Mr C. Buchanan), in presenting the balancesheet, said that more than £33,000 had been paid to the Patriotic Fund by the centre during thp war years. The following officers were elected: president. Lady Wigram; vice-presi-dents, Mrs Herbert Smith, Mrs J. G. L. Vernon, and Mr C. J. Ronaldson; chairman, Dr. J. Leslie Will; deputyrchairman, Mr A. E. Kincaid; honorary treasurer, Mr C. Buchanan; centre executive, the above officials, ex officio, and Messrs A. I. Cottrell and J. G. L. Vernon, Mesdames H; Wales, I. L. M. Coop t J.' Montgomery, H. D. Greenwood, and Gilbert Grigg, and Miss M. G. Havelaar.