GRATITUDE AND DIRECT GIVING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 134, 9 June 1942, Page 4

GRATITUDE AND DIRECT GIVING

Circumstances have been against the organisers of the Wellington Patriotic Fund appeal. The Liberty Loan, the social and national security payments, the weather, and other factors have operated to hamper the effort. All the more credit is due, therefore, to the organisers and collectors who have worked long and at great personal sacrifice under these difficulties. They have had to meet many complaints and objections. Some of these objections have a reasonable basis. For example, some people feel that one or more of the purposes for which the money is needed should be covered by taxation, directly levied upon all the people. But it must be recognised that these needs are a charge upon the Patriotic Fund, that they must be met, and, n6 matter how strong the case for another method of meeting them may be, the sick and wounded, the prisoners of war, and the soldiers cannot be asked to suffer while the subject is being argued out. That should be the deciding consideration: to see, at all costs and hy all. means, that this work goes on uninterrupted. Gratitude, real gratitude to the soldiers, demands that we who are living in peace and comfort should give way on questions of method. Our credit as a city is also at stake. When patriotic funds were being

helped forward formerly by games of chance there wei^ many people who disapproved. It was not creditable, they said, and really not true that Wellington citizens had to be given the chance of winning a pound before they would give a shilling for [the soldiers who were giving all. People who held no strong objection to a mild gamble took this view. The cause, they thought, should have a sufficiently strong appeal. Now an effort is being made to prove this. Hundreds of voluntary workers have given their time in making the canvass. If they fail to secure the desired amount, it will not be their fault, but it will be a disci-edit to the people who have failed to support them. Let it not be said that Wellington, in the midst of a great war, refused to contribute adequately for the sustenance of prisoners of war and the comforts of soldiers enduring untold hardships, unless the contributor were offered a chance of gain.