BACK TO DEATH

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4535, 11 February 1942, Page 8

BACK TO DEATH

CHILDREN RETURN TO LONDON “Warning parents of the grave responsibility they undertake by removing their children from ‘safe’ areas to which they have been evacuated, Mr Ernest Brown, Minister of Health, said recently that 4500 London schoolchildren are alive to-day because their parents did not bring them back. Another 4500 would have been badly wounded had they returned. ‘You remember,’ said Mr Brown, ‘how children flocked back that first wartime summer because parents thought it wouldn’t happen. Many of those children brought back were killed. They drifted back to death or maiming for life. Wise parents did not bring them back. Now parents are again saying: ‘lt won’t happen’— though nobody can tell when the storm will burst on us once more. I can only go on saying: Don’t do it! Don’t bring them back! Not even for a little while. Give them the chance of safety, even if it means sacrifice and loneliness when all seems quiet. I know it pulls the heartstrings. It is bound to, for evacuation deals with the deepest things in human life—love of home and family. But don’t do it!’ ”