Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1940. THE PATRIOTIC APPEAL.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 October 1940, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1940. THE PATRIOTIC APPEAL.

ATTENDANCE at the meeting called by the Masterton District Patriotic Committee on Thursday evening was very poor indeed and if this attendance (a total of some fifteen men ant women) had to be taken as an indication of the scale on which people of the town and district are prepared to contribute to patriotic funds the state of affairs disclosed would be both dismal and discreditable. Fortunately, however, that is by no means the position. After all. it is one thing to be willing to attend meetings and another thing to be ready to contribute to patriotic funds. The people of Masterton are not readily induced to attend meetings like that held on Thursday evening, but, like those of other parts of the district, they have responded well and generously to a number of patriotic appeals and no doubt will maintain this standard in the case of the appeal now launched. . . . , The position is that the Wellington province is being asked to find about £200.000 of the sum of £1,000,000 it is hoped to raise throughout the Dominion during the next six months foi the relief of distress in the United Kingdom and the Empire overseas, comforts for New Zealand troops in this countiy and overseas, and rehabilitation. The fund-raising campaign is to be carried on meantime until the end of November and then suspended until after Christmas. Nothing will do more to prompt and ensure a generous flow of contributions than the presentation of explicit accounts of the expenditure of these contributions. With tile facts befoie them of expenditure on stated and approved objects, the people of this district and other parts of the Dominion undoubtedly will maintain the flow of funds that is needed. In the matter of comforts for our troops overseas, for example,. no better propaganda can be used on behalf of the patriotic funds than simply in showing explicitly and authoritatively what the troops are getting and what they need. To serve its full purpose, information of this kind should be reasonably detailed and particularised. There has been hitherto some upsetting of plans which cannot justly be criticised, because it was the outcome of an adjustment of military plans, but as affairs are now developing, it should be possible to give a full and clear account of the details of patriotic administration. So far as comforts are concerned, the essential thing is to show that our troops are getting what they desire to have and what the people who subscribe the funds would like them to have. A policy of complete frankness is the key to the full measure of success that should be achieved in the appeal for patriotic funds.