Feilding Star, Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette. MONDAY, MAY 7, 1917. THE Y.M.C.A.

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 3234, 7 May 1917, Page 2

Feilding Star, Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette. MONDAY, MAY 7, 1917. THE V.M.C.A.

Said Dinkum Bill, from Murphy's Creek: "If one Jack Johnson shell Should blow me up and make notrip a longer one to—well, I'm only guessing where I'd go if I were busted up, But sure I'd meet a Y.M.- Bloke with his hot coffee cup I think, if sailor-men were wrecked within a submarine, A Johnny in a diving-bell would very soon be seen: The breathing-space inside the bell a coffee-stall would hold, And some old Y.M. Bloke would yell: 'Are you chaps feeling cold?' "

To-night Feilding is to have the privilege and the pleasure of hearing a first-hand account from one who has seen them in action of the beneficent operations of the V.M.C.A. Our visitor is a self-denying Auckland business man, Mr H. M. Smeeton, whose enthusiasm in the work of the V.M.C.A. was active long before the war. Some time ago a Wellington business man went out as a commissioner to see the operations of the Association in Egypt. He was followed by Mr Smeeton, who went abi oad at his own expense to see how the movement was getting along in tlus training camps in England and behind the lines in France. At bis own expense again the Aucklander is row touring the Dominion giving an account of what he had seen. As tens of thousands of our boys are over there where the V.M.C.A. is doing its good work, it goes without saying that the Smeeton Lectures on "Fighting Fritz to a Finish" will attract thousands of hearers. George Williams knew not when he laid the foundations of his society for young men that ho was providing for an edifice which was to prove a refuge and a very present help in time of need for men engaged in a world-war. Yet such the V.M.C.A. has proved to be, and who can tell the extent of its influence from now on? "Get the V M.C.A. to do it" is the slogan of our boys at the front and in training camp. We extend a hearty welcome to Mr Smeeton on his first visit to Feilding, and would again use the words of the Sydney poet in testifying to the ramifications of the Association he so worthily and generously rt presents—

It was a weary soldier-man who slept and dreamed a dream That all around the world he ran as swift as , Phoebus team ; He sped by Athabasca's lake, be hurried to the Horn, Hi went where Iceland's seagulls wake the echoes of the morn ; Across the wide Siberian waste his phantom footsteps passed, And clown to- Kerguelen raced before the northern blast. His body never left the tent; but, when the man awoke., He swore that, everywhere be went. be saw a Y.M. Bloke.