The Lord Mayor's Optimism A milestone in the history of the Lord Mayor's Red Cross and St, John Fund was reached recently, when, within five months of the appeal being launched by the Duke of Gloucester, the million pound mark was reached.
The Lord Mayor, in an interview attributed this great achievement very largely to the recollection by the public of the wonderful work performed by the Red Cross.
"The greater part of the first million has consisted," he said, "of spontaneous voluntary gifts, and, judging from a comparison with the Fund in the last war, it seems that they are more numerous and perhaps more generous, for the progress of the Fund has been more rapid, in spite of the fact that income tax at 7s. in the £ is immensely higher than it was at the beginning of the last war, and the conditions then were so entirely different, with the wounded pouring in from the great battles soon after. the war opened.
"On the one hand we have had magnificent contributions like Lord Nuffield's £100,000 and the anonymous gift of one piece of jewellery valued at £20,000, while at the other end of the scale sixpences and even threepences in stamps have been sent by the poor.
"Perhaps the most romantic of all the contributions is the collection which reached us from the officers and men of H.M.S. Ajax almost immediately after the destruction of the Graf Spee. There seems, indeed, to be no limit to the generosity of the public, and contributions of very large amounts are reaching us from Overseas.
"Notable gifts have come from Malaya, totalling in all more than £80,000, and recently £10,000 came from the Argentine, whose English residents have also contributed a hospital ship for the wounded in H.M.S, Exeter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.