RED CROSS ACTIVITY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4475, 10 September 1941, Page 4

RED CROSS ACTIVITY

COLLECTION OF FUNDS. STRONG CRITICISM. Branches of the New Zealand Red Cross Society were criticised for their wartime activities at a meeting of the Waikato Zone Patriotic Committee at Hamilton, on Monday, when Mr H. Johnstone (Whatawhata) asked Messrs G. A. Hayden and K. L. Usmar, of the National Patriotic Board and the Auckland Patriotic Council respectively, what became of funds collected by the Red Cross Society at the numerous functions held by branches throughout the district. Mr Usmar said the public should know that if they gave money to the Red Cross they were not giving it to the sick and wounded soldiers. The Red Cross had agreed to collect money only to carry on their peacetime activities. In many districts there were now active branches which did not exist before the war. Mr Hayden said the society had promised to send a circular to all its branches and advise them what they could and could not do. That promise bad not been kept. The chairman, the Mayor, Mr H. D. Caro, said that at a conference in Wellington the secretary of the society had been questioned about Red Cross branch activities, and when he said the branches only carried on peacetime work he was quoted the efforts ©1 .branches that did not exist in peacetime. The National Patriotic Board had done nothing to stop the Red Cross work, because it was afraid of giving offence. Patriotic funds were suffering through the activities of the Red Cross, and if the present system was to be tolerated the patriotic committees would simply cease functioning. The Waikato centre of the Red Cross had thousands of pounds in hand,, and no one knew what it was doing with the money. A shop was being run in the town and £3O or 40 a week was being collected. It was time the whole matter was brought to a head and the position of the Red Cross Society clearly defined. REPLY TO CRITICISM. In reply to the above, Mr A. E. Gibbons, President of the Waikato centre of the Red Cross Society said: “It is a great pity that the Society has been the subject of this attack, and it is surprising that members of the Patriotic Committee do not realise that by attacking the Society instead of getting on with their own work they are sowing distrust and confusion in the public mind, which must do material damage to their own efforts and New Zealand’s war effort generally.”