THE BELGIAN FUND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 6

THE BELGIAN FUND.

The campaign to raise £10,000 to secure the Lindauer collection of Maori paintings for the City of Auckland is an appeal to both our gratitude and self-interest—grati-tude to the Belgians who were the first of the free nations to throw themselves in the path of German militarism, self-interest that the artistic life of the city may be enriched at small cost. The city and province of Auckland have been asked to provide £1325 per month towards the feeding of Belgium— this sum being a fair proportion of the £15,000 a month which New Zealand has undertaken to provide by State grant and private giving. Auckland's liability has been covered for several months by the generosity of Mr. H. E. Partridge in giving for public uses a well-known and prized collection of Maori paintings, and it only remains for the people of the province to make considerably less than their cash equivalent available for the Belgian fund. Wc cannot afford to lose to the province and to New Zealand the artistic wealth of these pictures, but we can 1 well afford to subscribe the price at which they are offered us. If our gratitude to Belgium were growing, cold—which it is notthe campaign now being launched would assuredly command success as a business proposition very advantageous to the province. For a subscription of £10,000 to the Belgian fund the city is offered a collection of pictures worth much more, and of almost inestimable value to New Zealand because of their subject matter. Contributions towards this subscription will be credited against the monthly liability of the province, and will receive the subsidy offered by the Government on private contributions. Apart altogether from any considerations of self-interest the people of Auckland will respond readily to this appeal because of their sympathy for what Belgium has suffered in daring to resist German aggression. Our sentiments toward Belgium arc least likely to fail of expression at a time when, under a veil of censorship, Belgium is preparing to put a new army into the field to co-operate with the British and French in the work of driving out the invaders.