The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1918. ABOUT RED TRIANGLE DAY.

Taihape Daily Times, 6 March 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1918. ABOUT RED TRIANGLE DAY.

(With which is incorporated The Tai hapo Post and Walrsarlno News).

One of the most wonderful aspects of the present war is the amazing growth of the Young Men’s Christian Association organisation. Wherever men of the British Empire are fight* iug, in hospital, or resting, they are

shadowed by members of this organisation, who seem to be ever-present with just that help and just those things that our soldiers in strange lands, living under strange conditions, most urgently need. It is almost inconceivable that any voluntary help could expand to such dimensions and find the money essential for carrying on undiminished its glorious work. Yet wherever a soldier goes there is sure to be found a member of the Young Men’s Christian 'Association, and so far as the soldier is concerned it seems to be very nearly omniscent and omnipresent. The New Zealand soldier is followed into camp at Trentham and Featherston, writing materials are kept before him that he may not forget the anxious ones at home; on troopships the Y.M.C.A. is there; in ports en route to Europe it is ever ready at the soldier’s elbow; in British training camps its members are there to see that the soldier lacks nothing for his good; follow him to France and there with our soldier lad is the Y.M.C.A. men; at landings* on the continent they are there to give information, advice and to assist; at the camp behind the lines are hundreds of Y.M.C.A. depots where our lad may get almost everything he is in want of ,and right up to within a few hundred yards of the trenches, even there also are the Y.M.C.A. huts, its members waiting to administer to the needs and comfort of the men as they return from the trenches, bespattered with mud. Weary, unwounded men have hew life put into them by endless supplies of hot cocoa and other nourishing, refreshing ministrations. Follow those unfortunate ones, who have been struck by German missiles, into advance or base hospitals, the Y.M.C.A. is there also. In fact, that organisation has become almost as much a national institution as the Army itself. Its members are not eligible for fighting but they do not hesitate to move right up to where the fighters are so that they may be kept in good heart for their terrible tasks, and many a Y.M.C.A. hut, with its humane furnishings has been shattered to atoms and its attendants killed while engaged in the merciful work. We all realise that an immense sum of money is needed, an evei increasing amount, for as the army grows so does the Y.M.C.A. in sympathy grow. Pure admiration for the good work done has prompted the giving of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but supreme admiration can only come from those who have the

opportunity to see and admire. Now those who do ont see, but who ha\e the written evidence given in published official- and unofficial reports; those who have verbal testimony from the mouths of the men who have returned disabled; those who have any admiration for the sacrifices our lads are making for them; those with means, who have sons, brothers, relatives or friends still in the firing line; those who sympathise with the Y.M.C.A. men in their omniscient, merciful, hazardous work amongst our soldiers, are asked to give something so that in the great final, the deadly struggle that is about to commence, 1 our fighters may not miss the merciful ministrations they have so long been accustomed to. A day has been set apart—Red Triangle Day on which every man and woman in the Empire is asked to dw r ell upon the good work being done by the Y.M.C.A. I to think of the time now commencing, j and to realise that without*their asj sistance our brave lads must, from I want of funds, be deprived of attentions they have learned to look for as they leave the hell they have willingly gone into that we may live free and secure from German domination. Taihape is asked for five hundred pounds so that the Y.M.C.A. work may continue on the same level right up fo final victory. Those with money have given generously', very generously, in the past, and as the sum the Y.M.C.A asks for is not a large one, their request not an over-reaching one, there is little doubt but what the amount will be over-subscribed. The Y.M.C.A. does not turn any soldier away, no matter what his birth, religion, or noreligion; they refuse help and succour to no soldier wffiereever he may be, in ( camp, in the firing line, in hospital, or on the way home, and we feel sure that no man or woman in our community that has a spark of sympathy or gratitude will refuse the Help they are able to give in return. The great clash of arms is already beginning, there must be no delay in our giving, the money is wanted now, let not the appeal be unheard or unheeded.