ASYLUM FOR CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 78, 28 September 1940, Page 12

ASYLUM FOR CHILDREN

AMERICA'S OPEN ARMS

AMBASSADORS OF BRITAIN

I (From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, September 8. The cause of the British Empire can have no more capable and willing ambassadors than the children now [ arriving to take up their residence with ; American families for the duration. Twice a week a British vessel arrives bringing a juvenile contingent. American vessels are poised, ready and eager to take a part in this historic migration, but plans are indefinite, owing to Germany's persistent refusal to give an assurance that they will not be interfered with. Be that as it may, they will continue to come in British liners. These children make bright reading in the American newspapers. Everyone in Uncle Sam's domain is their friend. A million —two millions—of them would be welcomed in cities and towns and rural settlements from Maine to California, from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande. More so, because, on arriving, they know something about the New World and its people. They vie with each other in seeking information, and their thirst for knowledge is assuaged by brightly worded little pamphlets, issued as they go on board by members of the American committee entrusted with their care. They cheer the Statue of Liberty as they come up the harbour; they overwhelm the officers and adult passengers with their freshness and vivacity. Each vessel carries a "Mother" and a dozen nurses. These good women heave a great sigh of relief when the voyage ends, as they know its dangers. A "Mother" who has made two trips wrote in the Press an open letter to the boys and girls of America, because of two remarks made to her by English children. A boy of eleven years told her, "Last summer, my American cousin said English boys were sissy because they had quiet voices and were polite. Will they think I'm sissy?" A girl of thirteen years, asked why she objected to going, said vehemently, "Go, and have them say I ran away, when I'd much rather stay and face it out with daddy and mummy—that's what I mind!" "If evei? you are tempted to say 'Sissy' to an English boy, because his voice is lower, or his words seem to be more carefully chosen," she wrote, "remember that, from seven to fifteen years ago, England was full of gentlyspoken, polite boys like that. Today, the skies are full of those same boys, now grown to be hard, keen, brave men, whose hourly deeds of heroism are one of the great epics of our time. Day after day, night after night, the seas are patrolled by men who, not so long ago, were just like the boys you will soon have as your guests. "None of these English children have run away. In every case, where a child has received the choice, he or she has wanted to stay at home. One boy wrote from school in the south of England to his mother: ''Of course I've decided. I want to stay and help defend England.'"