Queen Of The North Wants War Work Again

Northern Advocate, 28 May 1940, Page 7

Queen Of The North Wants War Work Again

Queen of the North (Sister M. N. Collins) went through the last war. but itches to pull her full weight in the present conflict. Already she has offered her services to the military authorities, but was told that ex-scrvice nurses were not wanted. On offering to pay. her own expenses to travel overseas, Sister Collins was informed that trained nurses are not permitted to leave New Zealand. But Sister Collins is not prepared to take “no” for an answer. Meanwhile, as Queer, of the North, she has a big jcb to perform on the home front, and this morning left on a campaign tour of her territory, which stretches from Hclensville to >thc extreme North. From her experience in the last war, Sister Collins says definitely that no fund is more worthy of public support than the Red Cross-St. John appeal. Help for Soldiers In hospitals the soldiers got nothing except the comforts provided by either of these two bodies. 1 In the Egyptian hospitals one sister had been in charge of two wards, and to these was attached a small Red Cross room. Here the soldier entering hospital could put ina requisition for anything he wanted- a razor, writing material, or anything else. Similarly, on leaving hospital ,the wants of the soldier were provided from the Red Cross room. “Without the sick and wounded fund, the soldier could have got nothing,” said Sister Collins. War Service She is certainly in a position to know, because she had four and a half years of Great War service. Faying her own fare to England in 1915, she joined up with the British Red Cross and Order of St. John. She was sent to Malta—and narrowly missed disaster when her ship was very nearly torpedoed—spent six months there and was transferred to Egypt for a year. When she returned to England in 1916, Sister Collins linked up with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Reserve and nursed in English war hospitals. Volunteering for hospital ship duty, she spent several months on the Channel run and later on hospital ships round Africa. Best Goods From N.Z. Incidentally, Sister Collins says that the best of the gitfs—whether they were blankets, pyjamas or anything else—contributed to the Red Cross Society, came from New Zealand. Home again after the war, Sister Collins controlled a private hospital in Whangarei.

She was a member of the Whangarei R.S.A. executive for 15 years, and has been a life member of the association for five years. She was hostess at the Northland Court at the Centennial Exhibition. But those were peacetime activities. Now Sister Collins is all out for the war effort. The present campaign for the Red Cross and St. John appeal .is her greatest interest at the moment. Wants North to Respond She wants the North to spring a surprise as it did in the equivalent appeal in the Great War. Mrs A. E. Harding, of Dargaville, was Queen ol' the North then, and was runner-up to the New Zealand winner. Northland’s total collected was £41,000. “People of Now Zealand were amazed that the ’poor North’ could raise such an mount,” said Mrs Harding, who wrote to Sister Collins recently, offering to assist her in any way possible with the present campaign.