PATRIOTIC CONCERTS AT TUATAPERE

Southland Times, Issue 24422, 30 April 1941, Page 3

PATRIOTIC CONCERTS AT TUATAPERE

To The Editor

Sir,—lt gave me great pleasure to read that an anonymous donor had given £5 to the Home Guard in Invercargill. I would like to tell the people of Southland what has been done to subscribers of patriotic funds in the Tuatapere township. About six months ago the hall was completely destroyed by fire and since then the local concert party has been using the boxing gymnasium to raise funds for patriotic purposes and, finally, for the Home Guard. Members of the concert party give their services free, and the Boxing Club lends the gymnasium free of charge. In this way more than £l5O has been raised for different patriotic purposes. The night the concert party put on a special entertainment for the Home Guard the health authority said it would prosecute the boxing club for lending ■ its hall because the conveniences were not up to standard. In spite of this warning the entertainment was held, with the result that the sum of £lO/7/6 was raised, but a day or two later the club received a letter to the effect that it would be prosecuted if the hall was again used to raise funds.

The public here gives very freely to these funds, and I think it is a shame that their war - effort should be curtailed by persons who, if they did their job properly, would close half the country halls in Southland. The speaker at our Anzac service stated that Tuatapere had about the largest percentage of boys overseas and the largest membership of Home Guardsmen for a country township of its size in Southland. Is it red tape which has stopped this community effort? Perhaps the Minister of Internal Affairs could help us to raise funds for our soldiers overseas without all this red tape.—Yours etc., FED UP. April 28, 1941.