SCOTLAND.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4929, 22 January 1926, Page 3

SCOTLAND.

AN EXAMPLE. IN GENEROSIITY.

WORLD’S MOST LIBERAL PEOPLE. We often read and hear that Scotsmen are close-fisted. The fact is, the Scots ,are thrifty, but are the most generous people in the world. When occasion arises they are even magnanimously noble. It wifi be remembered sonie years ago that Glasgow beat every record in patriotic liberality by subscribing £14',000,000 during its “tank week.” Then England had a “Business men’is wteek,” in which every town and village in the country subscribed most lavishly, under the guise of buying munitions, from battle-cruisers to machine-guns. Scotland followed suit with “War Weapons Week.” The sum aimed at was £10,000,000, and over £18,000,000 was subscribed, an amount more than sufficient to break England's record of £4 per head. Many places subscribed double, or more than double, the amounts they had promised to raise. Edinburgh’s contribution was £2,393,000, Glasgow’s more than £3,000,00'0, Aberdeen gave £413,054, Dundee £381,204, Inverness!, £200,000, Kilmarnock £220,000, Leith £352,681, Falkirk £223,071. Some of the little towns and villages gave magnificentlyThe “Scotsman” mentions, particularly Stroma, a bleak littflfe island in the Pentla’nd Firth, with a total population, including children of all ages, of 285. Stroma set out to provide the cost of a machine-gun, but before it had finished it had subscribed no fess than £1489, or £5 4s 6d per head, which may well be described as, another nail in the coffin of the dying belief in Scottish stinginess.