PARCELS FROM HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 87, 14 April 1942, Page 6

PARCELS FROM HOME

"NEW ZEALANDERS ARE

FORTUNATE"

"We New Zealanders are apt to think we are far away from home. And so we are. But a recent cable from New Zealand impels us to reflect that the world is in trouble, and that, by comparison, New Zealanders are very fortunate," states an article in a recent issue of "N.Z.E.F. Times" which is published in Egypt. "The cable reads: 'Please pay to the Polish Diplomatic Representative of the Polish Government in Cairo five hundred pounds New Zealand for use comforts Polish Division in Libya from Poles in New Zealand.'

"The Polish soldiers get nothing from their home folks in Poland—no letters, no money, no cigarettes, no parcelsPoland stood up to the Germans in 1939. and since then—for two and a half years—the men and women and children of Poland have been subjected to a brutality that knows no bounds Those Polish soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who by some means escaped the prison camp, the concentration camp, or the execution squad, know nothing of the fate of their fathers, mothers, sweethearts, and children. Is it any wonder that the Poles in Libya fight ficercely? They have a hatred of the' German born of cruel experience. "What has happened to the Poles has also happened to the Czechs. The Czech soldier serving overseas gets no parcels. In his homeland food is very scarce, as it is in every country over which the Nazi locusts have travelled.

"When we consider the plight of our European allies, we feel ashamed that our complaints are about the nonarrival of our particular brand of beer, of some slight dislocation of our favourite New Zealand cigarette tobacco supply, or of the late delivery of our illustrated papers.

"Even the soldiers from the United Kingdom cannot get food parcels from home; their newspapers are even staler than ours; their letter mail takes much longer to come than ours.

"We should be grateful for the magnificent service our postal people have given us," concludes the article, "and we must realise that the misfortunes of war may bring us a few more inconveniences than we have already experienced. New Zealanders know that it is not possible to make war either comfortable or convenient."

In an undefended petition for divorce in the Supreme Court today Mr. Justice Ostler granted a decree nisi to Henry Edward Lyons (Mr. A. B. Siev wright) against Fre-ia Isabella Lyons. ->n the ground of separation.