BELGIAN RELIEF FUND

Otago Witness, Issue 3293, 25 April 1917, Page 41

BELGIAN RELIEF FUND

URGENT CLAIM UPON THE PEOPLE

A meeting of the Public Appeal Committee of the Ota-go Patriotic and General Welfare Association and tho Women's Committee that has been conducting a house-to-houso canvass in Duncdin and suburbs in connection with tho Belgian Relief Fund was held on the 18th. Mr Johnstone, in the course of an address appealing urgently for more support, said: No people had so great a claim upon us as had the inhabitants of a country which was almost entirely ants of a country which was almost entireli' occupied by our common enemy and- most inhuman and implacable foe. The plight of the unhappy Belgian people was to-day. more desperate than ever, for now that America had ioined tho Allies the great organisation which she had formed for tho relief of the down-trodden Belgians had, to some extent at all events, had its efficacy impaired, and its food ships were no longer immune from attacks by enemy submarines. Fortunately, however, Holland had taken over America's merciful work, and was doing all that lay in her power to see that the starving and semi-starving millions of Belgium were fed and clothed. Let each one ask what expensive personal habit had been curtailed because of the war and because of the sufferings of others. If we could not say that we had done any one or all of these things, then we might say of ourselves that we had failed in our duty. Mr C. Speight addressed the meeting in support of the effort to augment the fund. On the motion of Miss Runciman, seconded by Mrs Jackson, it was resolved that the monthly house-to-house collections for the Belgian Fund bo kept up, and that a meeting be called for early in May inviting all sympathisers with the fund to meet the committee, with a view to reorganising collections in certain districts that had become vacant.