BRITISH CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 10, 11 July 1940, Page 4

BRITISH CHILDREN

DOMINIONS' SCHEME

SELECTION PROCEDURE

SPLENDID RESPONSE

Elaborating the scheme for the evacuation of British children to the Dominions, and the conditions under

i which it was operated, the Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. W. E. Parry) stated today that the authorities in ! England and not the Dominion Governments selected the children -for the new land of their temporary home. It was partly in deference to a suggestion by the New1 Zealand Government that applications were invited from the [people of the Dominion who wished ito nominate for evacuation the childjren of their relatives in England and who desired that those children should be under their personal care for the duration of the war. The agreement of the Imperial Government to include the children of parents in England who had relatives in New Zealand! had, Mr. Parry said, made happy the homes of many families. The measure was taken for the safety of the little ones, he added, but it would be the means of bringing closer together members of families who in many instances had not before seen one another. SYMPATHETIC HELP. There was no doubt about the sympathetic keenness of New Zealand mothers and fathers, the Minister said, to help remove the children of their kith and kin from the danger zone. / "From all the cities and provincial districts of the Dominion," remarked Mr. Parry, "have come to the Government and the local bodies letters either nominating the children of relatives or expressing a hearty willingness to take any one, and sometimes more, of the children which the scheme will bring to New Zealand. Some of the letters are pathetic, for the writers have stated that the children they wish to look after lived in one or two parts of England into which enemy bombs had been dropped which naturally had not only increased their anxiety, but their desire to have with them the little ones."

The Minister said the addresses of children nominated by relatives in New Zealand were cabled by the Government to the authorities in England through the High Commissioner for New Zealand in London. The checking up and making ready the information for cabling had involved long hours of work for seven days in the week for officers of the Department of Internal Affairs —work which they had carried out uncomplainingly and with, great care and thoroughness.