ANTI-GERMAN CRY

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1924, Page 6

ANTI-GERMAN CRY

STORMY MEETING IN BATH.

Mm Sarah Grand, Mr Cyril Heath, and other speakers at a meeting at Bath m aid of starving Germans, were forced by an angry crowd to leave the Guildhall by an underground passage, through the Police Court, down the dock steps, into the cells, and out by a back door. Some of the speakers waited an hour in the police station. Mme. Grand, who was Mayor of Bath last year, left first, and detectives surrounded her motor-car to keep the crowd back. The meeting was disorderly from beginning to end. It was organised by the Society of Friends, and Mr. Cyril Heath was to have related recent experiences in Germany. Exservice men and women filled the hall, and sang “God Save the King” as soon as the first speaker tried to speak. “Don’t be hooligans,cried Mme. Grand. “I have come to hear the facts, whether they are unpalatable or not. I am moved by compassion for innocent children who are starving.”

Somebody in the audience said that there were" plenty of hungry children in Bath, and Mme. Grand retorted, “More shame to Bath.”

The local secretary of the British Legion and a soldier who was imprisoned four years in Germany, tried in vain to stop the uproar. A woman at the back of the hall gave a shriek of triumph as she seized one of the collecting boxes and jumped on it. Others scrambled for pieces of wood as souvenirs.

The crowd sang “Tipperary” and “Pack up Your Troubles,” and after the meeting had ended in confusion they went on singing in the street.