SPITFIRE AND LONDON DISTRESS FUNDS.

Evening Star, Issue 23728, 8 November 1940, Page 4

SPITFIRE AND LONDON DISTRESS FUNDS.

The appeal that has now been made locally for contributions to the Spitfire Fighter Plane and London Distress Relief Funds is certain of being responded to with pleasure by a great many persons in Otago. The London relief request is part of the Dominion-wide appeal which was made for all patriotic purposes, including rehabilitation of New Zealand soldiers. The appeal to this province for the funds to assist Loudon’s sufferers from aggression and provide weapons, in which it will have a direct interest, for protection of Great Britain directly, and indirectly of New Zealand, had to be postponed recently when other districts were subscribing to them, because the Queen Carnival arrangements for our own soldiers’ rehabilitation fund were too far advanced then to he interrupted. The postponement was a disappointment to many would-be subscribers who will now have the opportunity of showing their unbounded admiration and gratitude .for the “ Front Line’s ” resplendent heroism. The fund for the relief of British sufferers whose homes have been shattered from the skies and who too frequently have lost their all is unlimited. For the Spitfire Fund the Government has promised to remit up to £II,OOO from this province to London; anything over that amount will go to the New Zealand Aircraft Fund. The “ courage never to submit or yield” of the Londoners has won the world’s admiration. In the long record of British warfare, feats of the R.A.F. have never 'been surpassed. With full cause, in a poem of ‘ Punch,’ the old sea-dog Drake, whose memory seems to have dominated this war even more than that of Nelson, is made to express his approval of them. “ Though never we knew such craft as these. That ride the clouds as we rode the seas, They harry the foe as we harried him then, They hustle and harry him, one to ten As it was when we harried the might of Spain, Down the Channel and round by the Main, In the old Armada’s day.”

There can be no lack of response to the appeal for these funds, subscriptions to which may be sent to the ‘Star’ rffi as well as to the treasurer of ♦he Ot’.jro ’’ivvinciai Patriotic Council, at the "i I'fJ Hall.