SPECIAL EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 237, 4 July 1944, Page 5

SPECIAL EFFORT

Y.M.C.A. Opportunity With Pacific Troops (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) NEW CALEDONIA, June 2S. “At the present time you have a unique opportunity to render a special service to the troops. I cannot give them much in the way of work because I do not know what is going to happen. Now I challenge you to do something more for the troops and to take up this In these words, Major-General 11. L. Barrowclough, D. 5.0., M.C,., General Officer Commanding the N.Z.E.F. in the Pacific, asked Y.M.C.A. secretaries in the area to do more than they had ever done before for the troops. The challenge was made at the conclusion of an address nt a luncheon of Y.M.C.A. secretaries held to celebrate the centennial of the association. . Proposing “The Y.M.C.A., Major-Gen-eral Barrowclough praised the line work of the Y.M.C.A. and its officers in the Pacific to ininrove the general welfare of the troops and give them something else to think about than training and battle experiences. He expressed his appreciation of tho spiritual aims of the association. “One of the things I have bad very much in mind is the brutalizing effect of war in this area,” he said. “I never met it in the last war or in the Middle East in this war. but we have come up against it in this theatre. There is a regard for human life which exists in chivalrous warriors but which does not exist here. We do not call the tunc, but we have to dance to it if we tire to win. In addijimt. he said, conditions of living in tho jungle were trying in the extreme. so that people became in a number of ways careless in their way of living, ■That was what ho was extremely anxious to correct, and tlie one organization designed' to <lo it was tho Y.M.C.A. He had challenged tho Army Education and Welfare Service to produce something different from the ordinary run of Army concerts in the way of entertainment, and tho challenge had been taken up with excellent results. Now he asked tlie Y.M.C.A. for a similar effort.