EXCESSIVE GENEROSITY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8037, 9 January 1905, Page 7

EXCESSIVE GENEROSITY.

One feature of the Australian bush fires relief meeting, recently held in Wellington, was a speech by the Rev. P. W. Fairclough in condemnation of excessive generosity. Incidentally, he related some curious facts about previous relief funds. He said we lived in a world of telegraphs and newspapers, and these disasters lost nothing in the telling. He had been in Australia, and, reading between the lines of the accounts published, he fancied that the disaster was not such an overwhelming one, and that the people in the States, where the thing had occurred, were able to meet it over and over again. When in Brisbane, a few years ago, he had made some inquiries about relief sent from New Zealand at the time of a certain flood, and he had found that we had almost made a laughing stock of ourselves. It got to be a saying, "What, more stuff from New Zealand ?" The fact was that in every piece the people had started out with the idea that they would be required to do the whole thing themselves, and tbe result was that in Brisbane people nad to be sent to take the .•stuff away. In the same way relief was sent on the occasion of a fire in the Taranaki district, and visiting the district some time afterwards, he had been informed that a very fine bit of road over which he drove had been constructed out of the balance of the relief fund. The people, not knowing" what to do with the sum of £1100 or £1200 remaining after all wants had been met, had decided that they would have a few miles of good road out of it, any way. Other citizens expressed the view that it was better to give too much than too little.