A POOR EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 107, 22 January 1923, Page 5

A POOR EFFORT

Sir,—When I landed in Wel’ington a few weeks ago, after an absence of several years, a young woman came up to me with a box and some small flags, and asked me to contribute to the war memorial fund for Wellington men killed in the Great War. I could not have been more surprised if she had told me she had never heard of the war itself. As an ex-service man, severely wounded and shaken in health during the war, it struck me as an insult against those Wellington men who have given their lives, that it should be necessary to hold a flag day because the people of Wellington have only been .able, after all these years, to raise about £2OOO for a memorial (just a little over a pound per head for each Wellington man killed). I felt very bitter about the incident, and although I ain not a Wellington citizen, and have lost my health and a great deal of money through the war, I gave the young woman a subscription, which would amount to just over ten times the ten thousand pounds asked for if every Wellington citizen gave a. similar amount, and many could afford to give very much nioie and not feel ii one jot. The’ young woman told me that very few could be induced even to collect for the memorial, and I thought have the young women of Wellington so soon forgotten the dead, and do the rich business men of Wellington think they wou’d be in their present positions if those lives had not been dearly given, or have they lost their souls whilst others have lost their lives? Since leaving Wellington the only argument I have had against tho memorial is that the peop’e of this country have been taxed heavily in order to pay pensions to the returned wounded. What an argument 1 Boor fellows! Does God only know they deserve their pensions, and will only Ho remember the dead of AVellington who gave fheir lives that others might live?—I am, etc., ASTOUNDED. Masterton, January 16, 1923.