Red Cross Work in Europe Described by N.Z. Lady Director

Grey River Argus, 13 October 1949, Page 4

Red Cross Work in Europe Described by N.Z. Lady Director

An insight into the w’ork of the Red Cross on the Continent and in Britain was given by Miss Iris Crook, Director-General of the New Zealand Red Cross, to a large audience in Harker’s Cabaret, last night. Miss Crook, who told the gathering that she had lived in Greymouth during her younger years, spent eleven years in Britain and Europe, and was one of three New Zealand delegates to the International Conference of the Red Cross at Stockholm last year. “It is difficult to see the workings of the Red Cross in this country, because we are not at the receiving end”, she said. Britain was the main depot from which food parcels and clothing from the Dominion were sent to Europe. Referring to the misery caused by the war, Miss Crook said that old people were the chief sufferers. “Many people with whom I cam e in contact had developed a queue stance, but their humour was still unfailing”, she said. The Red Cross in <• London was doing a splendid service to old-age pensioners. In one London area, alone, 2500 meals were served each month to these people, the service being known as “meals on wheels”. Accompanied by Ministry of Food officials, she had visited two poorer parts of London to see the distribution of New Zealand food parcels. She saw people queued alongside a Town Hall waiting for the doors to open on a cold, frosty morning. They would have undergone any hardship rather than miss receiving the food. “The sight of these people filing up to the tables in the hall made one feel grateful for one’s own security”, /added Miss Crook. She warned the gathering of people coming from England and saying that people there did not require food parcels. These people had lived in hotels; they did not know the poorer side of life. In spite of the hardships, England’s humour was as great as ever. “You couldn’t climb in to a bus without the conductor saying, ‘Up you go ducks’!” Their manners had not altered. After arriving in New Zealand she was reminded that in Britain, “manners maketh the man”.

Miss Crook described th e International Conference of the Red Cross in Stockholm, at which 700 delegates from 68 countries were present. “It was very impressive to see all those delegates sinking their differences to work for a common aim”, she said. Sweden was continuing peace-time activities, which included the provision of health camps to care for children from Holland, Denmark, Austria, and Germany. The children stayed at the camps for six weeks, and returned to their homes in much better condition. She had later visited the Transjordan, where she found, conditions “horrifying”. The British Red Cross were trying to relieve the general poverty and distress, and in one of three camps, the staff, housed in two tents, were looking after 17,000 Arab refugees. It was unbelievable to see mothers and fathers bringing into the camp two-year-old children whose legs were like matchsticks. Their only food had been a little dried milk and flour. Many were dying each daj from t.b. and other diseases.

“If it wasn’t for the Red Cross, many people in Europe would have to commit suicide or starve to death”, she said. The conditions of workers were grim in Germany, where women, who were physically weak, could not afford to give up work. Butter was 30s a pound, and wages, generally, were £7 a month. The people on the land worked from, daylight into the late hours of the night. She saw hundreds of prisoners of war returning from the Siberian salt mines, and searching for their relatives and friends. “Children are the greatest sufferers from war”, she said. In Germany the Red Cross had thousands of orphans and adults housed in huge camps.

Miss Crook commented on the action of the New Zealand Government in taking 1000 children and adults from war-ravaged countries. It was the first country to include old men and women in its immigration schemes, and this gesture had received enormous publicity in Sweden and Britain. “It would have been pitiable if the old people had been allowed to die alone in the camps’’, concluded Miss Crook.