The fact that in little more than a fortnight subscriptions have poured into this office to the amount of over £5900, or at an average of over £350 a day, speaks for itself.
The response of the public has been as prompt as it has been generous.
It is no small satisfaction to us to have been the channel for the collection of a fund of such substantial dimensions to mark the recognition by the people of Otago of the magnificent work of the Royal Navy, and their sympathy with those who have suffered deeply through the losses it has sustained in its resolute defence of the Empire.
Our debt to the navy is incalculable.
In their endeavour to reckon it in terms of their security and prosperity the people of New Zealand cannot fail to realise this, and they have done what was to be expected of them in welcoming the means of expressing in a practical manner their keen sense of the value of all that the navy is enduring and achieving in behalf of all parts of the Empire.
• The frightful menace of venereal disease which has been forcing itself upon public attention in many ways recently, is to form the subject of a lecture in His Majesty's Theatre after church hours on Sunday night.
The speaker is Captain W. H. Pettit, a graduate of Otago University Medical School, who returned last year to New Zealand after six years' medical experience in a mission hospital and dispensary at Chandpur, Eastern Bengal.
While on furlough here Dr Pettit offered his services to the military authorities, and since February he has been on the medical staff of the Featherston camp.
While there Dr Pettit became greatly impressed with the need for giving the men adequate warning against the frightful perils and temptations of Eastern cities as he himself had seen them.
He began to give lectures to the men on this subject and to explain to them the ravages of venereal disease, and after a short time these lectures were made compulsory, so that all the men might have the benefit of them.
Dr Pettit is so deeply impressed with the need for more knowledge and warning on this often-ignored subject that he is devoting part of a brief visit to Dunedin to making the dangers more widely known.
His subject tomorrow night is "The Perils of Young Manhood'', and he will be assisted in his explanations by a very fine set of lantern slides illustrating venereal diseases.
The meeting will be open, of course, only to men and to boys over 15. Colonel J. Cowie Nichols will take the chair.
• White Pine is the most suitable timber in New Zealand for making butter boxes, and the farming community, as indicated by a motion adopted at the Provincial Farmers' Conference at Levin recently, is becoming anxious because of a threatened scarcity.
The remit was put forward by Mr Saunders, as representing the Shannon branch, and it read: "That the Government be urged to place a limit on the export of white pine timber.''
Mr Saunders contended that the end of the white pine was in sight, and said that it was a serious matter.
No other timber was so well suited to the making of butter boxes.
The remit was agreed to unanimously. - ODT, 24.6.1916.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
