POPPIES FROM GERMANY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19976, 19 June 1928, Page 6

POPPIES FROM GERMANY.

PURCHASED IN BRITAIN. WREATHS AT CENOTAPH. STATEMENT AT A MEETING. COUNTESS HAIG'S PROTEST. [from our own correspondent.] LONDON. May 16. The use of German-made poppies on Armistice Day was condemned by Countess Haig, speaking at the annual conference of the women's section of the British Legion, presided over by Lady Edward Spencer-Churchill. Many of the wreaths at the cenotaph last Armistice Day # Lady Haig said, were made from German poppies. She spoke of the great interest her husband had always taken in the women's section. "He always said the men's Legion could not get on without the women," she said, "and at every British Legion meeting he attended he always asked if the women's section was represented." She added that her name had been proposed as a vice-president of the women's section. "I hesitate to accept," she said. " I lire in Scotland, and one's home duties and the care of one's children come first." Referring to the poppy factory, of which she has been made patroness, Lady Haig said that what troubled her, and what had troubled her husband, was that so few people purchased their wreaths for Armistice Day from the factory. "There are still numbers of German poppies being bought in this country," she saidj amid cries of "Shame." "Last Armistice Day, more than one-half of the wreaths on the cenotaph were of fresh flowers and at least one-third of the remainder were of German manufacture." Fresh flowers, she added, did not benefit disabled men. Earl Jellicoe, the newly-elected president of the British Legion, in place of the late Earl Haig, asked the women to help in the matter of emigration. "Women can help in this because it takes a certain amount of persuasion to break up the home and seek your fortune abroad," tie said. If the mother can he persuaded that it is good for the family as a whole to go, then the difficulty of leaving is simplified." Captain W. G. Willcox, hon. appeal secretary to the Douglas Haig Memorial Homes Fund, later said: "It is certainly true that about a sixth of the poppies placed on the cenotaph are not our poppies. There are several firms of arti-ficial-flower makers who sell poppies to the florists, from whom the public buy them. The public do not realise that the only poppies which benefit our disabled men are those which bear the words 'Haig Fund' on the metal centre. We have 250 disabled men working at Richmond, but if we had more orders we could employ more men, and would enlarge the factory if necessary. It is a question of educating the public." It was added by Captain Willcox thai he had every sympathy with people who liked to place fresh flowers on the cenotaph, but he felt that, if they realised they were not doing the same practical good to the cause of disabled soldiers, they would forgo this luxury, and purchase Flanders poppies made by the men who had suffered in the war.