BOYS FOR NEW ZEALAND.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 13938, 11 January 1911, Page 7

BOYS FOR NEW ZEALAND.

THE LIVERPOOL CONTINGENT.

A PROMISING LOT

(FROM our own correspondent.) LONDON, December 2. Sir W r illiam Hall-Jones, accompanied by Mr Donne, paid a visit to Liverpool on Wednesday with the object of inspecting and conversing with the contingent of boys who have been selected from that centre to complete the fifty who are leaving for New Zealand by the Athenic on the Bth inst. under Mr Sedgwick's scheme. They were met on arrival in Liverpool by Canon Gibson Smith and the chairman of the Liverpool Education Committee, and had an opportunity of completely satisfying themselves as to the character and physique of the boys selected. Thoy were found without exception to be a likely lot of youths, exhibiting much the same characteristics as I have already described as being possessed by tho youths selected from the East End of London. . AH are clean, well set-up, and well spoken lads, and they answered with promptness and frankness all the questions put to them.

"Do you see that boy?" remarked Canon Smith in a whisper as the second of the youths left the room. "When I first interviewed him a few weeks ago he was starving. He had not had sufficient food for 'weeks to enable' him to move about with activity. He was thoroughly emaciated. Since then I have given, him a shilling or two every day to purchase food, and you see the result." The boy. was as promising a looking lad as any, and to the High Commissioner he expressed his gratificatipn at the opportunity which he was .getting of starting afresh.in life. Before the boys dispersed the chairman of the Education Committee invited any of them who wished to say anything to step forward. One of them promptly stepped out and made a very neat little speech, thanking the High Commissioner for approving him and his companions, and expressing their appreciation of the chance which had suddenly come into their drab, hopeless, little lives. Sir William and Mr Donne were afterwards present by invitation at a reception given by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, at which they met many of the leading citizens. At a meeting of the Education Committee later, the chairman said this was the first time that a colonial Government had made itself responsible not merely for sending out the boys, but for seeing that they got a chence when they arrived at the other end of the world. If this movement was a success, 50,000 boys would -be wanted instead of fifty.