TO HELP THE POOR

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7447, 23 May 1911, Page 4

TO HELP THE POOR

AID FOB STARVING LONDONERS. (To the Editor “K.Z. Times.”) Sir,—As English colonials we are justly proud of what we have done for the Motherland. In time of war wo send our soldiers (I was one); in time of peace wo build our Dreadnoughts; in time of pestilence or earthquake wo are always ready to help. But ouo tiling wo have forgotten to assist in lately, and that is England's starving poor. Wo send our money to the rich institutions and the missions to foreign lands, but almost forget our own kith and kin, our own fiesu and blood, starving and dying daily. \Vo all know that things are bad with London's “submerged tenth/" but I personally had no idea of the flagrant ana daylight exposure of misery everywhere in great wealthy London to-day. It was only a glance at the “Canterbury Timed' of 'April 12th that told me of the Herculean eiforts that are being to oopo with this “gnawing want" by Eustace Miles, the great vegetarian athlete ■and proprietor of many “correct food" restaurants in London. Every day 10-0 are fed with good rich soup and a roil oi wholemeal bread, .and he. is now appealing in the English papers for funus to carry on this noble wont. In _ the colonies we know of poverty only slightly, and of starvation seldom, if ever; and 1 argue while we can afl’ord to send our crowds and our Ministers to the coronation to spend, and to guzzle we should try and remember the thousands of people homeless, destitute and dying for want of food. Lately in England X saw the most abject and pitiful cases of poverty, and I imagined such cases were singular, but I find that over a million people iu London alone are in daily, hourly want. X write to ask your pap'cT and your city to organise a fund to relieve this dire distress. Eustace Mike and his charming wife and co-partner will gratefully acknowledge any funds from rich and prosperous New Zealandwho can only faintly imagine the fearful distress of those poor British outcasts, lining up in a “queue" to wait for a morsel of food, men too young to be without work and yet, owing to freetrado and tho influx of foreign labour, unable to get it; men too old for work, and women, who because they are women of our own nationality, should not have to beg at Eustace Miles’s big free kitchen on the Thames I am, etc., FRED. ELTON. “Thunderbolt" Picture Co. I have-handed £& to the “New Zealand Times" for a beginning of the fund to London's starving poor,- and can only say if satisfactory arrangements could b© mad© I would gladly give a novel picture entertainment in • this city, the whole proceeds to go to the fund. We have received the £5 referred,, to • Mr Elton. Any further donations will be acknowledge in these columns, A subscription list has been placed in the business office of the “Now Zealand Times." —Ed.