POPPY DAY TO-MORROW

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 April 1934, Page 6

POPPY DAY TO-MORROW

PROCEKDS TO HELP UNEMPLOYED The annual Poppy Day effort will be held in Nelson and other larger dis-j trict centres to-morrow (Friday). Stalls in the business portion will be in charge of a ladies committee, while the residential areas will be visited by the scholars of the various schools. Throughout the country districts the teachers and children have ngain kindly consented to assist, and the. organisation and control in the different localities is in their hands. Since the inception of Poppy Day the proceeds have been devoted to the relief of unemployment, during the difficult winter months, and will be utilised this year for the same purpose.

Captain W. G. Wilcox, M.8.E., National Organiser of Poppy Day. in the course of an article entitled “Tl’.e Flower of the Hallowed Host,” wrote: — “To the War we owe one of the most popular of our National Observances—the wearing of Poppies on the anniversary of Armistice Day. The whole country on Remembrance Day, as we now know 11th November, is a blaze of red—the red of poppies made by disabled men in the British Legion Poppy Factory. Each poppy worn—and the total runs into. nearly 40 . millions: each year—is an .individual’s private thankoffering to the men of 1914-1918. “As a ‘street collection,’ to give it its official designation, Poppy Day easily stands out as the world’s largest one-day free-will offering. Not’ a very exciting record perhaps —not such a good newspaper story as an air or land speed record, but nevertheless a record demonstrating the quality of British remembrance, the sterling kindness of the British heart.

“It was only in 1921 that the Poppy Day Appeal was first put to the test. The late Field-Marshal Earl Haig was convinced that in an annual sale of poppies lay the future welfare of.distressed ex-Service men and their families. He was quite right. The first appeal, with only a few weeks of hurried preparation, brought in £106.000 to the funds of the British Legion, and year by year the total steadily grew until in 1929 the total raised on'the one day reached the magnificent figure of £595,000. In cur pride at these achievements wo must never forget that the late Lord Haig, always the champion of the British exService man, worked hard for the Poppy Day Appeal up to the very day of his death. His great influence did much to smooth the path of Poppy Day in ils gradually increasing and widening ramifications.”

THE VICTORY EMBLEM Oh ! you who sleep in Flanders fields HFep sweet—to rise anew : We caught the torch yon threw, And holding high we kept The faith’ with those who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red That grows on fields where valour led It seems to signal lo the skies That blood of heroes never dies, Hut lends a. lustre to the red, Of the flower that blooms above the dead In Flanders fields.

-And now the torch and poppy red Wear in honour of our dead. Fear not that ye have died for naught, We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught In Flanders fields.