STREET COLLECTIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25299, 9 August 1943, Page 2

STREET COLLECTIONS

Sir,—lt seems necessary for correspondents who have written on the subject of street collections to consider carefully and thoughtfully whether our children are to be guided and taught reality and truth in regard-to the facts of the world they live in. Are they to be told truthfully and frankly that during a depression there is a shortage of nothing but monev or tickets, and that through the shortage of tickets people must starve? They must realise that this Is wrong, and not be hoodwinked and mislead into thinking there is something sacred and unchangeable In the laws of money; and they cannot be taught these truths and at the same time be told it is necessary to collect money now to give our fighting men something in the future. Also, if they were told the facts of the activities of the patriotic boards from the last war they would 'realise how diabolically wrong the whole policy is. They should be told that Otago alone had about £33.000 left just before this war, and that returned men had to go and beg for assistance. and then did not always get it. If they did it would be a pound or two in the place of the many pounds they actually needed to keep their families and themselves from poverty, and many a returned man died in dire distress and poverty and his widow or wife had to go out to work. Either keep our young ones out of such affairs altogether or tell them the whole truth. There was never a truer saying than, "You cannot serve God and Mammon,” and it is time our young people were taught to serve God in the truest sense of the meaning. They can only be taught this if they are given, a clear picture of the place money should have in our economy and the place the individual should have. Only when money Is regarded solely as tcikets to procure goods and services and these tickets are issued against the amount of goods and services available will it be possible to serve God as we should. Street collections are a mockery to any thinking person with real regard to the welfare of our fighting men, and the sooner your correspondents make a sacrifice of time for study along realistic lines of truth, and a sacrifice of loyalty to outworn traditions, the sooner will those who have seen the'light get assist-, ance to make their demands for justice, peace, and prosperity for our loved ones effective.—l am, etc., For Our Loved Ones. Dunedin, August 5.

[This correspondence is now closed.— Ed. O.D.T.]