POPPY DAY

Otaki Mail, 24 April 1923, Page 3

POPPY DAY

1041 EX-DIGCEiIS UNEMPLOYED.

To-day, April 24, is Poppy Day, when poppies made by the children in the devastated areas ol Prance, will be on sale in Otaki, and every other town ancl district ol New Zealand 'or the purpose, primarily, of helping the children ol those areas, and secondis of helping our own returned men wito are out ol employment, of whom there are at- present 1041. Ol our duty to those in Northern fiance \vho hore the brunt oi rive ,i ears of lighting and whose country offered correspondingly it i. s uimec- • -sory to speak. If they did not sutler .or us, at least, their suffering and their resistance enabled us to make our resistance effective- anu ju.tiea demands that we should .acknowledge our debt. But, whatever our opinion on tiiis point, on Ihe question of our duty to our own men there can tie no

division of sentiment., and this applies particularly to those men for whom these funds will be particularly used, whose wounds or other disability arising from the war, prevent them ,ompeung on an equal looting with more

fortunate men. These are the men t.f whom it is said : “Back from the place where the soil is red, i And the earth is torn and bare; ' Where the sleeping forms of the nappy

dead Are free from cankering cure. Letter their lot than tlxe man’s v ho

returns Broken and worn from the war.” These are the men whose ’utures form a perpetual debt against *he community, and a perpetual problem, and the H.¥.A. which is, of alt bodies

in closest contact with the incvit-ible aftermath of war is making these men its special care this year. A a hut year, when a sum of £4740 14s was raised in the southern half of the North Island, and a total of £3270 . as available after the third allocated to France had been forwarded, the

money will be spent through the medium of the different local bodies, and it is hoped, subsidised £1 -'or £!. When the scheme was inaugurated the general conditions laid down oy the District Committee for tiie administration of the funds were; (a) That they tie spent on wages to unemployed returned soldiers throughout the district in works of a productive nature; (b) that preference lie given to H e most necessitous cases, with first t reference to married men, then -.ingle men with dependents; (c) that the fund be spent through local iodic; ami seinbpublic institutions which would subsidise Hie funds collect id. and that. it. be spent upon works o' a public nature; and ft!) that, the standard rate of wages be paid. The last clause applies pnrticul uiy to the object which the B.S.A. has in mind more particularly tins --ear, namely, that where men through, incapacity arc unable to earn n nfl wage, their earnings be subsidised I from the Poppy Fund a* far as inis

will allow. This year only half the number of poppies received last year were sent, out from France, so that for this district there will only be 900 available, instead of the 1700 of last year, and these will be divided according to quota of population between the different schools in the district, and will be offered for sale, as is fitting, by school-children to help their lees fortunate fellows in Franc*’, and the men whose sacrifices in the late war have, possibly, saved a recurrence of Hie unpleasantness of war during the lifetimes of the sellers. These poppies are emblematic of those others of which it is said :

■‘ln Flanders fields, the poppies grow Between the crosses, row on row.” And everyone who purchases a poppy will have the assurance that he is doing something towards the work for which those sleepers died.