MIKADO GIVES £3000

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2341, 24 December 1914, Page 6

MIKADO GIVES £3000

■ B TO THE SALVATION ARMY. A cablegram in yesterday's Dominion 6tated that the Mikado of Japan had given the Salvation Army £3000. Com. niissioner H. C. Hodder, who has been in charge of the Army's work in Japan for the last six years, stated yesterday to a Dominion reporter that this was the second occasion only on which the 'Emperor' of Japan had made a direct gift to a foreign body concerned in religious work. The first was when the late Mikado presented £1000 to the Y.M.C.A. movement in Japan in recognition of the good work done at the timo of the Russo-Japanese 'War. This gift to the Salvation Army is the second. "I think I know what it is for,"' said the Commissioner. "Consumption is very rife in Japan, and before I left wo purchased a site for a consumptive sanatorium just outside the city of Tokio. I believe that the money is a contribution towards the building." "We also in May last got the building especially erected for the funeral of the late Empress of Japan," continued Commissioner Hodder. "Whenever royalty dies in Japan a special temporary structure is built in which the funeral service is conducted. On the occasion of the Empress's funeral it was erected in the grounds of the Yoyogi Imperial Estate. That building cannot bo sold, nor must it be burned. It is usually given away to the most deserving charity in need of building material at the timo. The building we got was worth about £1000," "Though this is only the second occasion on which a Japaneso Mikado has made a direct gift, the Army is assisted by an annual grant from the Japanese Government, who believe in tho good wo are doing in our social activities."