Mr Savage Launches King George V. Memorial Fund Appeal

Northern Advocate, 23 March 1937, Page 5

Mr Savage Launches King George V. Memorial Fund Appeal

fSpecial to "Northern Advocate .” 3 WELLINGTON, This Day. rpruE Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, has issued an appeal J to the Dominion to supplement, preferably by direct giving, the King George V. National Memorial Fund, which will be devoted to the permanent establishment in New Zealand of Children’s Health Camps.

Mr Savage also announced that the Government opened the fund with the sum of £25,000, and ,in addition, would subsidise pound for pound all moneys subscribed by the people of New Zealand after the fund, inclusive of the £25,000, had reached a total of £50,000. The Government, he said, sincerely trusted that between now and June 3, his late IMajesty s birthday, that the fund would reach at least a total of £IOO,OOO, the minimum amount necessary to ensure the proper establishment of two permanent camps in each Island.

The object, the Government, felt, would be more in keeping with the sympathetic concern always felt by His late Majesty for the health, recreation and welfare generally of his, peoples throughout the British Commonwealth of Nations, than any other of the numerous projects which had received consideration.

Widely National In Character. The scheme for health camps had the additional merit that, while widely national in its character, its benefits would not be confined to any one spot in New Zealand, The basis of it, as visualised, would be at least two permanent camps in each Island as centres of the whole movement. From humble beginnings just after the war, itylr Savage continued, the health, camp movement had moved ahead with giant strides, and, throughout the Dominion, thousands of children from both town find country had been dealt with. ;

“In some cases,” he went on, “extensive periods of camp life throughout the year,. particularly at Otaki (our i nearest approach at present to the jtype of permanent camp we are visualising), in others, weeks of healthrestoring sunshine in summer and holiday camps have, at small cost, set firmly on the' road to permanent health, children who otherwise would be in danger of life-long ill-health and of becoming a heavy financial burden on bur State and local medical and hospital services. Generous Response in Past. “The regard in which succeeding Governments and the people of New Zealand have , held the movement in’ the past seven years is evidenced by the official establishment of the annual Health Stamp Campaign and. by the increasingly generous response of the people to that campaign. The movement, hpwever, reached a point last year when its future depended on the scattered local effort being nationally | organised. As the result of a conference held ; in Wellington last July,_the movement is now so organised” that any danger of wasteful dispersed effort is obviated. , v j. “The movement did not begin as- a. Government effort. It began with the people themselves. It grew through, their unaided efforts. It became associated with the State through its importance and the national value of the work it was doing. Its association with the State, particularly through three great Departments—Health, Post and Telegraph, and Education —has not resulted in the movement becoming just another State service. “On the contrary, none more than succeeding Governments and the permanent departments of State realise hot merely the importance but the absolute necessity of preserving the identity of the Health Camp Movement as a work of the people themselves freely banded together in all the various associations and leagues, and voluntarily organised into local committees, district executives, central councils, and a Dominion Advisory Board. A Shining Example. “It is a shining example of national work done in co-operation between the people themselves and important departments of State, these latter not governing but advising and helping financially and in other directions. The Dominion Advisory Board itself reflects this co-operation, consisting as it does of two delegates from each of the' central councils (at present four in number), the Director-General of Health, the Director-General of Post and Telegraphs, and the Director of Education.

“Not in brass or stone or marble, but yet in the creation of this tangible memorial of Children’s Health Camps, a form he himself would have preferred, will the name of George V. be an ever-living ’ memory to the people of this far-flUng .outpost of the British Commonwealth of’ Nations which he served, literally unto-death.”

“It is this Dominion board which the Government intends shall administer the King George V. National Memorial Fund. The moneys will not be paid into the Consolidated Fundi but will be formally vested in trustees, of whom the Minister of Health will be one.

Outside Realm of Politics. “The memorial to King George V. is a matter altogether outside the realm of politics. The Government of which I am head cannot claim for itself that it either originated the Health Camp Movement or began Government assistance to it.

“Here and now I pay tribute to the work of past Governments in helping the movement along, notably by inaugurating the annual Health Stamp Campaign, and also by freely enlisting the aid of members of the present Government party when they were private members of the Opposition. What the present Government has done has been to recognise the national spirit of its predecessors and to carry on the work they began. “It is most fitting, therefore, that my appeal should be on as national a basis as the object of the fund and the response which I know the people of New Zealand will ma!ke. To that end I invite my immediate predecessor in office, the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes, and the present Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Adam Hamilton, to associate themselves with me in this appeal. “In replying to my invitation, Mr Forbes said:—l will be pleased to have my name associated with the appeal that you are making to the people of New Zealand to support the establishment of permanent children’s health camps in New Zealand as a national memorial to His late Majesty. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more fitting as a memorial, as His late Majesty during his whole lifetime, showed the deepest sympathy with those in illhealth, particularly the children.— Wishing the appeal every success. King George VI. Approves. “Mr Hamilton, too, gladly agreed to support my appeal. “I am further able to announce that I have received through His Excel-

lency the Governor-General, intimation that his present Majesty, King George VI. approves bur proposals, and approves them, moreover, as an object for a national appeal, in lieu of any Coronation memorial. “I desire to acknowledge the public spirit of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and the Red Cross in resStily agreeing to forgo in favour of the King George V. National Memorial Fund their proposed joint Coronation appeal. “I make my appeal to every individual in New Zealand as well as ;to every organisation of the people of every kind. “And I make this appeal- to the people, not in their deep grief of a year ago, but in their calm recollection today of all that King George V. was and of all that his example meant to the welfare of his people and the peace of the ' world.