OLD LADY’S SACRIFICE

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 December 1940, Page 2

OLD LADY’S SACRIFICE

BRASS FOR GOVERNMENT.

LONDON, November 1.

An assortment of old-fashioned brass, given to her when she set off as a young bride to start a new life overseas, has been sent to a London newspaper by a woman in Canada. With the parcel she sent the request that the brass be handed over to the Government, “to make a few bullets.”

The parcel included two candlesticks, a large brass kettle, a broken tray, and a shoehorn. It was an old lady’s sacrifice —a sacrifice of sentiment. It had been sent across the Atlantic from Canada to avenge the little children who lost their lives crossing the ocean to Canada and safety—the victims of the City of Benares.

The old dented kettle had been polished till it shone as if to be worthy of its last message: Good luck to Old England.” For 40 years, the sender had treasured the brasses as mementoes of her old home. “The candlesticks have been in my family for 60 years,” wrote Mrs. James Robson, of Montreal, Canada. “It made me just mad when I heard about the ship going down with the children on board. I feel so useless here.”

So the family treasures, kept through the years to remind an Englishwoman of an English hearth, have been returned across the ocean dedicated to her memories of the Britain for which we are fighting today.