PALACE OF GIFTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 October 1940, Page 6

PALACE OF GIFTS

THE WAR PRISONERS. STRICT WATCH BY CENSOR. War has brought a complete change of scene to St James’s Palace. This once royal home now houses the Red Cross department for prisoners of war. Here, women are working long hours packing grocery parcels which in three weeks’ time, if their journey is successfully accomplished, will be received by British prisoners in German camps. Each soldier receives two parcels a week, his 16s worth of food including sardines, canned stews, canned mince, canned fruit and chocolate. More women are collecting bundles of clothing for the prisoners in the banqueting hall of the palace. Some of the prisoners ask for plimsolls so that they can keep fit in gymnasiums; others want shorts for bathing in village pools. In the armoury, suits of armour, bayonets, pikes, swords and other historic weapons still cover the walls, but no one has time to glance at them and the usual silence of the vast hall is broken now by the sound of girls’ voices as they count out money that is to be sent away. The palace's picture gallery is another centre of activity and here reproductions of such famous pictures as Winterhalter’s young Victoria and Holbein’s Henry VIII look down on the censor —a middle-aged motherly woman —who examines all the private parcels sent by next of kin each three months. Her work is saddened at times and children will often try to hide messages in the toes of socks and these must be sought for and thrown away. Messages are, of course, strictly forbidden.