When Christmas Gifts are Welcome
CHRISTMAS is the season for giving. Let us, in accordance with our usual practice, indicate briefly some of the good causes that should be helped by our generous readers.
First come those great and noble organizations, the Church Army (Bryanston Street, W. 1) and the Salvation Army (Queen Victoria Street, E.C. 4). They engage in so many activities all over the land that one is tempted, perhaps, to take them for granted and to assume that they are self- sufficient. There could be no greater mistake. Both Armies need special help in these days when the burden of poverty and unemployment is so grievous. Prebendary Carlile, the veteran chief of the Church Army, wants to provide an extra number of Christmas dinners for the very poor, and says that X10 will feed 120 old folk or young children. Could the money be spent to better purpose ? Dr. Barnardo's Homes are open at all seasons, as they have been for sixty-four years, for orphan and destitute children. On the average they receive five cases a day, and they are now sheltering 8,000 children. At Christmas time this wonderful charity deserves special remembrance. The good that it is doing is incalculable—not least in training as settlers for the Dominions some of the waifs and strays who, but for Barnardo House (Stepney Causeway, E. 1), would have no hope. Another famous old society that is helping the poor little folk is the Invalid Children's Aid Association (117 Piccadilly, W. 1). It has many branches in London and many affiliated societies throughout. England. Last year in London alone it cared for nearly 18,000 children in its various homes, and there is abundant official testimony to the value of the work, especially in cases of rheumatism and heart trouble. Then, again, there is the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Victory House, Leicester Square, W.C. 2), admirably organized and tactfully managed, which has saved many a suffering child and brought many an ill-behaved parent or guardian to see the error of his ways. Over 100,000 cases last year showed that the N.S.P.C.C. is still indispensable.
The name of the Children's Aid Society (117 Victoria Street,, S.W.1) speaks for itself. For three-quarters of a century this valuable agency has been caring for the children that need help, whether because they are poor or homeless or in bad hands, and it can count up nearly 100,000 young folks to whom it has done good. To maintain its various homes and to continue its rescue work the society is making a special appeal for £12,000, and it will not ask in vain.
Among the hospitals, all most deserving and all hard pressed for funds, let us mention especially the Cancer Hospital (Fulham Road, S.W.). For this remarkable institu- tion is now appealing for £150,000 to establish a new radio- logical block. While cancer research pursues its uneven course, the curative powers of radium, at any rate in some cases, are generally recognized. The establishment of the Radium Commission by the Government has shown that the new method is to be developed, and it is highly important that the Cancer Hospital should be enabled to play its part in fighting the scourge of modern civilization by the new weapon that chemical science, has provided. The recent heavy gales have made us all think of the sailors who for the most part do their work unseen and unregarded by the community which they serve. The British Sailors' Society (680 Commercial Road, E. 14) may surely count on an extra measure of support for its effort to make this a happy Chiistmas for the men staying in its homes in various ports. For well over a century the society has been caring for our merchant seamen, and there are no two opinions as to the value of its splendid work. The St. Andrew's Waterside Mission for Sailors (City Chambers, Railway Place, Fenchurch Street, E.C. 3) in its unobtrusive way supplements the work of the sailors' homes by interesting the men in religion and good literature. Parcels of books and magazines will be most acceptable, as the Bishop of Stepney points out. Then, too, for sailors who are past work there is the Royal Alfred Merchant Seamen's Institution (58 Fenchurch Street, E.C. 3), which cares for 125 old men in its homes at Belvedere and has besides about 1,500 pensioners—seamen, widows and dependants—who receive monthly allowances. Here indeed is an excellent charity that is all too little known.
In the London slums many devoted men and women are always at work, striving to bring a little brightness into the lives of the very poor. To mention a tithe of them would be impossible. We must be content to draw attention to One or two. The Hoiton Market Christian Mission and Institute (Hoxton, N. 1) once again means to provide firing and food, and if possible clothes also, for a number of the slum children at Christmas. Hoxton is one of the most depressed districts in all London, and here the mission has plenty • to do. Again Mr. William Wheatley, honorary superintendent 'of St. Giles's Christian Mission and Wlieatleys Homes (15 Gray's Inn Road, W.C. 1), intends to provide Christmas dinners for five thousand poor folk, old and young, in the Seven Dials district. The mission is over half a century old and is famous for its work among discharged
prisoners and juvenile offenders : its Christmas feast is a happy and 'much needed supplement to its regular activities. Somers Town, the very drab district behind Euston Station, has some energetic clergy at St. Mary's who are determined to put new life into the parish. The curate, the Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott, has started a choir school at Highgate where promising lads from Somers Town can be trained and given a fair start on the educational ladder. In an amusing pamphlet (issued from 39 Cholmeley Crescent, N. 6) he begs for funds to endow this novel work.
Among other deserving charities there is the Royal Associa- tion in Aid of the Deaf and Dumb (413 Oxford Street, W. 1), now eighty years old. It is not generally known that in London alone there are four thousand deaf-mutes, terribly handicapped by their infirmity. The association that helps to cheer their lives and find them employment is a friend in need. Another society dealing with special and very sad cases is Miss Smallwood's Society for the Assistance of Ladies' in Reduced Circumstances (Lancaster House, Malvern). It needs but little imagination to realize that this agency, wisely managed, brings relief to many a proud and silent sufferer.
There are two hundred pensioners on the list. To many young mothers in distress Woman's Mission to Women (Victoria House, 117 Victoria Street, S.W. 1) has brought needed help, whether material or moral. Its maternity homes and hostels for mothers and infants deserve fuller support ; the average expenditure of £7,500 a year must be covered if the good work is to be kept up.
Philanthropic in the larger sense is the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (Northumberland Avenue, W.C. 2). Here we may commend that branch of its activities which is concerned with emigrants. To every parish priest the society sends a pamphlet, The Church's Care for Empire Settlers," with a list of clergy overseas, to whom a parishioner who is emigrating may be commended by means of an identity card. Many a man owes his happy start in the new life oversee to this simple plan, which Church people should encourage and assist. We may also commend once more the untiring efforts of the Friends of Armenia to keep alive the remnant of that most unhappy race. At Beyrout and Aleppo there are refuges for some of these persecuted Eastern Christians, and more could be done if the society were better supported.
A very gallant new venture, begun only last week in time for Christmas, is the first hostel of the S.O.S. Society (61 Mount Pleasant. W.C. 1). The society's main purpose is to help the workless individually, to prevent the unemployed from becoming unemployable, to take the " down and out " and raise them up and bring them into touch again with their fellow-men. After making full inquiry the society decided that there was need for more refuges where homeless men could have a night's shelter free. Its hostel, named after the late Mr. Studdert-Kennedy, is to be " small enough to be run on fellowship lines to avoid the taint of institutionalism," and it is to depend largely on voluntary helpers. The list of vice-presidents includes the names of the Marquis of Canis- brooke, Lord Cushendun, Lord Dewar, the Duchess of Hamilton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge, and the Bishop of Kensington took part in the opening ceremony. We wish the S.O.S. Society well. If it can treat its clients as friends, not as mere cases, it should achieve much.
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