UNCLE TOM FUND

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 110, 5 November 1915, Page 8

UNCLE TOM FUND

WHAT THE NIECES AND NEPHEWS ARE DOING

LARGE COLLECTION ANTICIPATED.

Wellington city and suburbs were overrun with children from quite early this morning. From house to house went

"guy" (or no guy at all). Halfpast 4 to 5 a.m. appeared to be the most fashionable hour of calling, just in the moments of "beauty sleev>."

"Guy, guy, guy ! Give to the Belgians!" That was the principal slogan. School vied with school in collecting, and child with child. "Uncle Tom's" idea has been seized on with a vengeance. The children dragged the residential parts of the city with a fine mesh net, and they did it again and again. At Courtenayplace tram station they swept down on to the cars like a swarm, of locusts, rattling their boxes in the faces of passengers and gathering a great catch of'pennies and silver. Sometimes a pennywould fall among the crowd. There was a fearsome scramble and bumping of heads and boxes, all in good humour, but all in the fiercest spirit o£ competition. No place where there was the possibility of • picking up a "penny was sacred to them. Perhaps the most confidential corner in all New Zealand today is the office in the G.P.O. where the National Register is being compiled. Here, in defiance of all rules and regulations to ensure secrecy, the children penetrated with their jangling boxes. The streets were full of children, in all sorts of costumes, Red Indians, cowboys, clowns, pierrots, cavaliers, soldiers, sailors, and girls as nurses, "Eelgia's", Britannias, and pierrettes raced along with their boxes. One of the first returns to come into this office was that of the Kilbirnie School, which, up to noon, had collected £70, and reported "still going strong."

Brooklyn had a procession of fully 400 children, which marched from the school through the main street, marshalled by the teachers. Every variety of costume was represented, and the children who had already been round the neighbourhood in the early morn as "Guys," fell out of the grand march and collected from passers-by, especially at the tram terminus.

At an early hour the Hutt Scouts, ably assisted by a band of older giris attending the Eastern Hutt School dressed as members of the Red Cross Society, visited various residents and solicited aid on behalf of the destitute Belgian children. The Scouts called the sympathetic attention of the public to their cause by carrying a boy supposed to be wounded on a stretcher, whilst another boy had his arm in a sling. The Scouts and their girl friends are confident that they will be able to hand in a goodly sum to the worthy cause this evening. The amount collected by the Clydequay School up to noon to-day was close on £70.