THE FRESH AIR FUND.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1911, Page 9

THE FRESH AIR FUND.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir, — It is with a deep and grateful recognition of how much I owe to friends and sympathisers in distant portions of the Empire that I venture to-day to appeal to your readers once again to help mo with the Fresh Air Fund. We, in the Old Country, just now, are rightly supposed 'to have most of our thoughts fixed on the Coronation, and upon ell its attendant festivities, but his gracious Majesty the King, with the' characteristic thoughtfulness of his family and his own read> sympathy for the sick and suffering, hae gone out of his way, in many directions, jto remind his subjects that we must not on that account forget the poor in. our midst; and a few weeks ago his Majesty became the patron of the Fresh Air Fund. I think I mentioned in my last communication to you, how King George, when he was Prince of Wales, drove one bright spring afternooA from London, accompanied by the Queen, to Epping Forest — ro inspect, in person, over a thou&and slum children whom we had collected from some of the most squalid and poverty-stricken districts in the East End of London. ' It was an example of Royal sympatlij and thoroughness that created a profound impression on the public mind at the time it happened, with the result that the Fresh Air Fund's figures took a tremendous leap upward, and lost year a qSarter of, a million poor children drawn from the slums m all the big cities of England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland were given, at least, one day's chance of breathing pure air and of receiving plenty of good food in some of the prettiest and most health-giving- villager in the Mother, land. Tho Motherland 1 Sometimes 1 admit that we who have taken on our shoulders the care and the rescue of her thousands and thousands of unloved and unwanted little slum mites grieve sorely over tho motherhood when we think of the actual extent of the oroblem in misery and wretchedness to which we havo put our hands. Twenty years ago I remember I started the Fresh Air Fund with a day's treat to 20,000 waifs, at a cost of ninepence a child. This year. 1911, I see that the fund have to provide for something like 300,000— -and many of these, alas! will be &o sick, so weak, so helpless that nothing less than a fortnight's rest at the seaside will give them even a fighting chance of life. I do, therefore, urge your readers to help me as quickly and as generously as they can with subscriptions to the Fresh Air Fund, the address of which is 23, St. Bride-street, London, E.C. A small gift of ninepenee will give one outcast a Whole day in the country — a railway journey, two meals, games, and friends. £8 2s will provide for a special party of 200 with the necessary attendants, to which the donor can give any name he, or she, likes; and I, personally, icnow no better method of commemorating any unexpected stroke of good fortune or any loss> "too deep for tears" than this special treat to poor, starving children of the old country that have never known tho brightness and the gladness and the open-air joys that colonial children enjoy as a natural birthright. I am very anxious that this twentieth anniversary of the Fresh Air Fund shall be marked by a record subscription list. The fact that I am not pleading in any way for mysolf, but entirely for poor little wretched half -starved mites who have lived in nothing but vile rookeries and rags and a poisoned foetid atmostphere that has stunted frame and mind, makes me bold to ask all who can to come specially this year to tho assistance of the Fresh Air I'und. There is something in the dumb, uncomplaining misery and wretchedness of these children which I am certain men and women with hearts cannot refuse today to answer ; and I personally can assuro youi- readers that in return for any set of charity these waifs will give them all they have to give — loving and grateful remembrance of the unknown friends who first showed them the glories of the open air, and first helped them to look at tho blue sky above their heads. — I am, etc., C. ARTHUR PEARSON. 23, St. Brido-street., London, E.C.