WORST SUFFERERS'

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 145, 21 June 1935, Page 3

WORST SUFFERERS'

MENTAL PATIENTS. RETURNED SOLDIERS' NEED. CLAIM ON PATRIOTIC FUNDS. Strong support of the effort which the Auckland R.S.A. is making to relieve, as far as & possible, the suffering of the ex-servicemen who are patients in the Auckland Mental Hospital was given to-day by the Rev. J. A. Thomson, of St. Paul's, Remuera, who is himself a returned soldier. '"It seems to me that now the facts are known the public must be wholehearted in its support of the association in this matter," Me. Thomson said. "The attitude of the joint committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John is difficult to understand. That the men who are mentally fit, but in need of the bare necessities of life, have a claim on the funds which the committee administers on behalf of the contributors' will be readily acknowledged by all; but that they have a claim which excludes that of the mentally unfit would. I am sure, be denied by the great majority of those whose sympathy and gratitude prompted them to contribute these funds. Committee's "False Assumption." "The committee's attitude, it seems to me, is based on the false assumption that suffering caused by poverty and physical disease is greater than that which is experienced by the mentally afflicted. I do not think I am lacking in sympathy with those who suffer because of poverty and physical disease; but I am convinced that the blessing of a sound mind enables one better to carry the burden of these unfortunate experiences.

"The scenes described in tlio article in Monday's 'Star' suggest suffering which is unrelieved by any ray of hope or understanding and which, for that reason, make an insistent demand upon our sympathy. That the motive which moved the public of Auckland to contribute to the funds which the joint committee administers was sympathy with the suffering of those who made sacrifice for their country, is beyond question; that the committee is conscious of a grave responsibility in its administration of these funds I have no doubt at all; but that it should refuse to give sympathetic consideration to the claims of those whose suffering is most intense <s beyond my power to understand Cannot Speak for Themselves. "As one whose service during the war brought him into the closest possible contact with the sick and wounded. I think I know something of the spirit of the men who suffered, their patient courage and their hope that, somehow, out of their suffering there would rise a world of better conditions for all mankind. That the suffering of any of these men should fail to hold our sympathy now would be a tragedy; but that those whose suffering is greatest and who, because of its very nature, are shut off from their fellows and rendered incapable of speaking for themselves should be denied the fullest measure of our sympathy would be the greatest tragedy of all."