PROBABLY A RECORD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 296, 21 April 1941, Page 5

PROBABLY A RECORD

POPPY DAY APPEAL

EXCELLENT STREET SALES

Although the final figures registered by the Peppy Day appeal are not yet available it is understood that the effort has far surpassed that of last .year and will probably be a record for this district. The street sales on Friday were excellent and practically equalled the total result of last year without returns from the country being added.

The Returned Soldiers' Association this year set out to obtain better results in view of the largely increased responsibilities they have undertaken, and the public which lias responded so well will know that excellent work is being made possible by its generosity.

History of the Poppy,

It is interesting to recall events leading up to the adoption of a common emblem of remembrance by the Allies of the War, 1914-18.

Soldiers first saw the red European poppy growing in Gallipoli. They grew profusely in the coastal area of Palestine in the spring, and on every front in Europe they appeared in profuse quantities in spring and early summer. Particularly where trenches had been dug, where the earth had been torn up by shells, where men had fought and died, they seemed to grow more luxuriantly than elsewhere. It was a common experience during the trench warfare in France that "No Man's Land," between the trenches of the opposing armies, was a glorious mass of crimson poppies— about the only life that was there.

John MacCrae immortalised the poppy, before it Avas adopted by the Allies as a symbol of remenv brance, when he wrote:— "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, Between the cx*osses row on row That mark our place, and in the sky The larks still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below." Shortly after the Armistice widows and orphans in the devastated areas in France commenced making artificial poppies as a means of augmenting their livelihood. Later, to assist ex-servicemen and others, each of the Allies adopted the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and now in the British Commonwealth alone, millions of the emblems are sold each year. In England to-day, the British Legion Poppy Factory provides employment for approximately 350 disabled men, but although New Zealand originally got its supply of poppies from France and later from England, its supplies are now made by disabled New Zealand soldiers in Christchurch, under the control of the N.Z.R.S.A.

The late Earl Haig, our leader on the Western Front for the greater period of 1914-18, who was chiefly responsible for welding the many ex-servicemen's organisations of Europe into a single unit, the British Empire Service League, was keenly aware ot the need of funds to assist men who suffered from the war but who, whether in receipt of a pension or not, required further assistance, threw his whole energy into the effort to have "Poppy Day" in the Empire, a truly national day of remembrance and thanksgiving.