BELGIAN REFUGEE'S MITE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 258, 19 July 1918, Page 4

BELGIAN REFUGEE'S MITE

4 A TOUCHING TRIBUTE TO FRANCE. One of Hie most beautiful tributes to the' French, illustrating the tender regard in. which they are held in this tho hour of their severest trial, has been silently paid by a Belgian refugee, at present working in an office in Wellington. The young lady in question was a resident in Antwerp when tho evacuation of that city took plnco in the early weeks of the war. With hundreds of others she left (he city before the approach of the Hun, and was landed at Dublin. There, sho

went into service, and when her employers came out to Sydney some little time, ago, she came with them. Finally she decided to coino to New Zealand to try her fortune. .When she was almost at tho end of her resources a friend found her n billet and lent her I' 2 to pay her back board. By striving hard sho managed to save enough to pay tho loan back ajain, but when her friend refused to accept the money last week, she weutto Captain Barclay, organiser of "New Zealand's Tribute to France,'' and offered him tho money "for France." Hearing her story, Captain Barclay refused to accept tho money, saying that it was "New Zealand's tribute." At tliis her distress was so real and her desire to contribute the money she hod saved so acute that Captain Barclay at length accepted it as the contribution of a Belgian, and to-day it appears on tho list simply—"A Belgian refugee, _ J?2." Captain' Barclay quotes, the incident as one showing the steadfastness of purpose and heartfelt regard that tho Belgians have for their gallant neighbours, und asks the public to think of this gratuitous act of grace when contemplating tho appeal that is now being made to the people of New Zealand to help the French in the crisis through which tho nation is passing.