PROMISES MADE BY TELEPHONE

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24371, 25 September 1944, Page 6

PROMISES MADE BY TELEPHONE

DOMINION TOTAL £407,000 (P.A.) * WELLINGTON, Sept. 24. The district war loan totals of thf coming week will be appreciably im proved when the promises made in the radio appeal are redeemed. The results are regarded as particularly good., the total promised being just over, £407,000. Two occasions of great anxiety were mentioned by the Minister of the Armed Forces and War Co-ordination (the Hon. W. Perry) when he introduced the appeal to listeners. ‘Many times during this war,” said Mr Perry “we in New Zealand have had cause for grave anxiety. It would be idL to deny that we were filled with something like dismay when the British troops were compelled to evacuate Norway, when France cajvtulatea when Britain seemed wide open to invasion, when the hail of death and destruction descended on England. Scotland, and Wales, when the enemy stood at the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad, when Rommel was poised for an attack on Alexandria, .when the U-boat menace was at its height, when the Japanese octopus sucked down Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and stretched through the Pacific almost to the shores of our own country, until arrested by our American Allies in the Coral Sea. A grave anxiety besets New Zealanders to-day—a fear, perhaps an unworthy fear, that New Zealand, with victory not yef achieved, will fail to oversubscribe this Victory loan.” Mr Perry recalled that October 4, the day on which the loan was to close, was the twenty-seventh anniversary of the day on which the first New Zealand Division went over the top at Passchendaele. It sustained 8000 casualties.

“Let us beware,” concluded Mr Perry, “lest the sun set on this anniversary with the loan under-sub-scribed.”