"CARRYING ON"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 192, 15 August 1941, Page 9

"CARRYING ON"

VICTORIA LEAGUE

LONDON'S STEELED HEARTS

''There seems to be some ingredient in our make-up which steels our hearts and gives us more courage with every blow that falls." These words which sum up so strikingly the attitude of people in Britain to-day were contained in a letter to the secretary of the New Plymouth Victoria League, Mrs. M. Murphy. It was written by Miss Marjorie Leaf, who has taken on the secretaryship of the London headquarters of the league, following the death of Miss Gertrude Drayton, C.8.E., when a bomb demolished the league's Mallet Street club for servicemen in April. Miss Leaf says:—

'It was a grim sight in the morning to see our wonderful building in a state of devastation, but everything else paled before the thought that Miss Drayton was gone." Miss Leaf enclosed a copy of the service which was held for "Gertrude Drayton, C.8.E., and those who died with her," in St. Martin-in-the-Fiekls Church. "The one thing which we all felt most keenly." continued Miss Leaf, "was that Miss Drayton would have wished the league's work to go straight on. We therefore moved back to Cromwell Road the next day and we are hoping to open a new club as soon as may be. Temporary Btirean "In the meantime we are opening a temporary information bureau in Trafalgar Square to which men can come to ask for hospitality, theatre tickets and so on. We feel this will be a way of keeping in touch with them, as- Cromwell Road is too far out. for them to come. "It is still a little difficult to realise how much we are in the front line, but nothing brings it home to one so forcibly and so tragically as the loss of one's relatives and friends.

"We feel that every one of our friends in the Empire and in the countries which have been ruthlessly subjected to German domina-, tion is as sure as we are that the' rightness of our cause can only end in final victory."