RED CROSS DISPUTE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 878, 23 January 1930, Page 7

RED CROSS DISPUTE

AUCKLAND BRANCH NOT CONCERNED SURPLUS WAR FUNDS According to Sir James Gunson. Auckland is not involved in the dispute which has arisen concerning the funds of the British Red Cross Society in New Zealand, from which their Excellencies the Governor-General and Lady Alice I Fergusson withdrew their patronage last week. There is a branch of the Red Cross Society in Auckland, and this has representation on the Dominion executive. There is also a joint committee, upon which the society and the Order of St. John are equally represented by members of their Auckland executives. Sir James Gunson is chairman of this committee, as well as president of the society. The committee was founded in 1*916, and has continued its work without any interruption or friction of any nature ever since. It established the Evelyn Firth Home for disabled ex-service-men. The fine property which the home occupies was purchased by the committee with war funds which were available for that purpose. No differences of opinion exist as far as the control and disposal of the Red Cross Society’s funds in Auckland are concerned. The society and the Order of St. John work together most, harmoniously in various activities. From a speech made in Wellington early last year by Sir John Hewitt, who was on a special mission to New Zealand at the time, it is perhaps possible to gain some further light on the dispute which has arisen in the South. In his speech. Sir John appealed for efforts to devise a reasonable way for spending the balance of the joint fund of the two bodies, which was then available for the relief of civilians as well as ex-servicemen. At the end of the war the unexpended fund amounted to £1,826,000. Authority was obtained from the Imperial Parliament to use it for any deserving object, including the alleviation of sickness and suffering among the civilian population, on the condition that preference was given to schemes which would benefit ex-servicemen. The joint committee in Britain allocated to New Zealand a sum of £30,000, plus £24,500, being the unexpended balance of a special “Our Day’” collection made in the Dominion. The sum of £54,500 was sent by the joint committee to the then-Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, and was by him entrusted to an incorporated society called the New Zealand branch of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John. “I understand that the representatives of this body contend that the fund belongs to the British Red Cross Society, and that the Order of St. John has no interest in it,” said Sir John. “This contention seems to be ill-founded.” The secretary-general of the Order of St. John, and the secretary of the British Red Cross Society, had signed in July, 1926, a joint document suggesting that the New Zealand fund should be administered in future by a committee of nominees of the two bodies in equal numbers, or, alternatively, by a separate joint committee. However, this advice was not taken, and the dispute was still in existence.