OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 December 1939, Page 6

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

PATRIOTIC FUNDS (To the Editor) Sir—l am sorry that the letter over Mrs Fletcher's name in your issue of Saturday last makes it necessary for me once again to refer to patriotic funds. What I told Mrs Fletcher, and I have told her more than once, was this: The Salvation Army in its desire to be of service to the men in camp was anxious to erect marquees and to present two ambulances to the Government. Being short of funds for the purpose at the time they approached the Ministers concerned and received their consent to go ahead with the project. It was arranged that the cost of the marquees and ambulances should be a charge against the National Patriotic Fund (not the Provincial Patriotic Funds) and that the Salvation Army should be appointed by the Minister of Internal Affairs an Authorised Collector for that Fund: in other words the onus was thrown on the Salvation Army of collecting from the public that which it had spent in advance on the forces. No money has been paid or will be paid to the Salvation Army but the cost of the marquees and the ambulances will be defrayed out of the National Patriotic Fund for which the Army is to collect. I understand that a similar procedure was adopted with the Y.M.C.A. Mrs Fletcher's letter is the most curious amende that I have read for some time. It seems to me that she has aggravated the offence for which she purported to make amends. In our admiration for the boys let us not practise self-deception and then boast about it to our friends. The boys at least are in deadly earnest and not very much concerned with "Tweedledum" and "Tweedledce.”—Yours, etc.. THOS. JORDAN. Masterton, December 11.