URGENTLY NEEDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1943, Page 2

URGENTLY NEEDED

BOOKS FOR FIGHTING FORCES NATIONAL PATRIOTIC BOARD APPEAL, QUALITY MORE IMPORTANT THAN QUANTITY. A big national appeal for good books and magazines for the forces overseas and in New Zealand is being made by the National Patriotic Fund Board. A drive is to take place during the fortnight beginning May 17. Every effort is being made to t)uy books, but in view of the shipping situation it is clear that in the meantime it will not be possible to get as many as the troops need. Therefore resources must be mobilised from the private bookshelves of New Zealand. House to house one-day book drives have produced too large a proportion of unusable material, and an approach through organisations over a longer period is now being tried.

The help of every organisation in the community is sought, and those ready to act as sub-depots and collect material from their members for transmission to the headquarters for Wellington and adjacent districts are asked to communicate with Mr Jos. Norrie, City Librarian, Wellington Public Libraries, P.O. Box 1529, Wellington, C.l, who will advise when accumulated material may be sent in.

The supply of good books must be doubled by the beginning of the winter. Unless the New Zealand public will give quickly as well as generously some of the members of the Armed Forces must go without books or be put off with indifferent cast-offs.

Urging an American book-drive, Mr Wendell Willkie said: “The simplest and surest method of choice is to select a book with someone in mind whom you know. We all know men who are fighting or in training today. A book you and your friends are reading, he and his friends would like to discuss. For those men are not regiments or squadrons or crews. They are human beings. They are our sons. Is is asking too much for us to see that they have books to read?” “Only fairly recently purchased books in sound physical condition,” Mr Norrie states, “are wanted. Quality fs much more important than quantity. The person who gives a Cronin, an H. V. Morton, a Penguin special, and a Reader’s Digest is making a far more valuable contribution than one who presents fifty or more stale books published twenty or thirty years ago. New Zealanders are said to be the best book buyers in the world. Let the books which we give to troops prove that we are also generous and discriminating givers.”