APPEAL TO WOMEN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3732, 20 December 1927, Page 2

APPEAL TO WOMEN.

SUPPORT THE EMPIRE. ADDRESS BY MRS. AMERY. Napier, Dec. 18. An appeal to New Zealand women to support the Empire., and to remember that the Empire still needs little services and sacrifices that can easily be made in daily life, was made by Mrs L. S. Amery, wife of the Secretary of State for the Dominions, on Saturday. “I have been asked to give you some Christmas message,” said Mrs Amery, “and though I could do it briefly by offering you conventional greetings, I would like you to allow me to put my message in a different form—to express it in words which, if my appeal is answered, will bring happiness at Christmas and at all dimes not only to you alone, but to every Briton in the Empire. I can think of nothing more worth saying to you than that I hope you will remember, when you set out upon your shopping expeditions next week, how greatly not only the Empire’s prosperity but your own depends upon what you buy. I think that one of our greatest needs to-day is to quicken within ourselves the realisation that every Briton, wherever he may be, is a member of a family whose welfare is entirely dependent upon tho welfare of its individual members. For reasons of sentiment, and no less for economic reasons, we must realise these facts. The more you spend upon British industries that supply you with goods that you cannot make for yourselves the more work is there for British working men. More New Zealand fruit and lamb and -cheese will he be able to buy for his family, and I may say that the work of the Empire Marketing Board has made the Briton at Home keen to be your customer. EMPIRE GOODS EVER'?' TIME.

“The more you spend upon another Briton 'the more that other Briton will have to. spend upon you (spending on a foreigner does not mean he spends on you), and the richer will grow what I have called the British family. If we all do our spending upon that principal you will easily see how tremendous the massed effect will be, and you will see, too, how much happier this and every future Christmas will be for every Briton An the Empire. Let it be Empire goods every time.

“May I say one other word, 'Where women and girls, and indeed men and boys, from the Old Country come put to you to make a new life for themselves, try to think of them as your own girls or boys going to a big new; school a very long way from home, and remember that they are homesick and amid very different conditions and surroundings to those they have grown up in. They must be of good stock and ‘triers,’ or they would not have come. They are well worth a friendly word, and good advice and encouragement over their first mistakes and in their first jobs. 'Certainly it will and does make all the difference to them and to their folks in the Old Land. Remember that it is not people wo do not want at Home who are coming out. It is the ones we do want who, given a chance, can, and l will, make good at Home or abroad. But they, like your own ancestors, having a keener spirit, want to try their fortunes abroad.”