Just Silent Workers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 137, 6 February 1942, Page 5

Just Silent Workers

MY mind goes back to the last war, when a body of honest-to-goodness Englishmen decided to raise sufficient funds to put up a building for the use of soldiers and sailors on leave. Many meetings had been held, discussing the cost of the building, the site, the furnishings, the number of rooms, and so on. After many such meetings one of the members got up and suggested that another member and himself should be appointed as a special sub-committee to go into the question of ways and means for raising the money to purchase the land and also to erect the building. This was agreed to, and the sub-committee of two went into solemn conclave together. Next day they reported that it was no longer necessary to worry about the finances as all the money required for these two objectives was forthcoming. Not till the war was over and the land and buildings were handed over to the Army for soldiers’ recreation rooms, did the subscribers’ names leak out. There were only two names-the two members of the sub-committee. The story had it that when these two adjourned, they tossed up, and the winner had to pay for the new building and the loser for the land. The fact also remained that the public were not asked to’ put up a single penny as the rest of the committee saw to all the furniture, billiards tables, in fact everything from the hundred bedrooms down to knives, spoons, and forks for the restaurant. If that was not sufficient they all, joint and severally, guaranteed the cost of fuel. gas and electric light for the duration of the

war:

-( " Just Silent Workers." Major

F. H.

Lampen

2YA, January 8.)