A FEW GERANIUMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 February 1924, Page 1

A FEW GERANIUMS.

When 1 came hack to England, and mi my wav home passed Buckingham Palace, 1 was struck with the bed* laid out there. The throe or four hundred geraniums seemed so poor and inadequate niter the streets oi Purlin! | wondered why some ol the money spent on street deoratioii could not have been paid in “reparation’’: for the Germans it would mean fewer llowers. less beauty in their streets, lint something towards tlio payment of their just debts. Theatres, picture palaces, concerts, and dance-rooms were “literally packed out at every performance.’’ Alter Act I at the theatre, the audience rise as one man, and pom out into the vestibule, whore they walk round and round, eating heartily of dark brown bread sandwiches, drinking leer or wine, which they Hut from Ihe bullet. .Miss Moore adds: “I personally saw no lack of anything. - ’ The hotels are full, not only with people who are staying in them, but witli casual visitors who come in for live o’clock tea : this begins at three, and continues till about eight o clock. The dining-rooms are never closed am! meals seem to go on all flay long. "Men with corrugated backs to their necks." as Sir Philip Gibbs so aptly describes them, sit lor hours partaking of sugar cakes, ices, and lupiot.s. “Onlv once." Miss Moore goes on to say. “did I see the slightest hint of poverty, and that was where some wooden houses had been built outside the city during the war for poor people with families." Here '.she adds) the children, who were of the real gypsy type, played round us as we worked 'for f [Maying in a film) rolling and tumbling in the sand. A "bitter pill to bis people, ’’ Miss Moore says, is “the fact that so manyvaluable articles, plate, jewels. pictures, were sent ro the Kaiser in Holla ml.” >o valuable were many of the articles that, had he allowed them to be -old, the proceeds might have paid off a considerable amount of the reparation debt.