Our "Campaign Comforts " Fund.
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We Appeal to Works Managements and Committees to Start Weekly Collections, or to Ear-mark a Proportion of Existing War Relief Collections, for the Men with the Wagons.
Our appeal for funds to provide winter comforts for men of the heavy-motor brigade has proved to be a timely action. We have never raised a fund before, other than in bearing our considerable share in obtaining financial support for the annual parades of the C.M.U.A. We consider, with so many men at the Front, that the equivalent of expenditure upon Parade organization might now very well be provided by makers and users to serve the requirements of this new and pressing demand due to the War. We are strongly averse to the holding of a 1915 Parade anywhere, having regard to all the altered circumstances by which the country is confronted, but that issue is beside the point at the moment.
Anything from £21 to Is.
The list of cash donations is lengthening in satisfactory fashion, notwithstanding the wholly-just plea on the part of many old friends and supporters that they are doing all they can in other directions. It will be observed that gifts in cash range from 20 guineas downwards. The smallest subscription so far is one or 2s. 6d. ; we shall be delighted to include in our lists any remittances of Is. and upwards. We desire to give the widest possible scope for assistance, and to enable everybody to participate in taking special care of drivers and their mates at the Front. We explain in our first leading article the necessity for this unique action on the part of THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR, and point out that nobody, prior to our action of last week and the week before, had accepted the call to establish a fund for the purposes which are made clear in the accompanying form. Copies of this form were included in last week's issue, and they can be utilized by donors of gifts in cash or in kind.
Help from Works and Depots.
We are now able to write more about the offer of the proprietors of a London works, to which we incidentally referred a week ago as having been received over the telephone, in respect of a weekly collection
or the benefit of our "Campaign Comforts" Fund. This offer comes from our friends Messrs. ha. Bartle and Co. Lancaster Road, Notting Hill, W., the makers of subsidy hooks for the War Department and of the Easy-weigh jacks, who are well known in the industry as undertakers of machining and similar work for the trade. The senior partner in this firm kindly voluiiteered to put up a notice in his works to the effect which we have mentioned, and we are now able to quote its text:—
NOTICE.
Re Mechanical Transport Section, Army Service Corps.
THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR is starting a fund for providing tobacco, cigarettes, matches and gloves for the above section of the Army Service Corps.
As a large amount of our work at the present time is for this particular section we thought it would be a very good oppor
tunity for Jas. section, and Co. and their employees to assist: We think many employees will know what it means to drive for any length of time in the cold without gloves and also to be without cigarettes, so we propose asking for a weekly collection amongst the employees towards this fund.
We, of courie, do not suggest compulsion in any shape or form, but we feel sure that all employees will agree that whilst theyiare employed on fell time a small contribution would not be out of place. We suggest that collections should be made on Friday evenings.
We regard this action as but a slight indication of the help upon which we can rely from other 'works, both large and small, at which any class of manufacture is undertaken for the heavy-motor industry. This is a direction of potential co-operation with which we deal at some length in our first leading article, and we trust that the chief makers of commercial vehicles throughout the country will peruse our references tbereanent. It is only by concerted aid of the kind that anticipations will be realized in keeping with the demands which may be made upon us from the Front. It is of no real moment that systematic collections have already been in force for many weeks past: it is always competent for committees in charge of such funds to resolve, with the approval of the workmen who contribute, which approval we believe would be freely given if asked, to allocate one week's or several weeks' proceeds to so worthy an object as • the provision of winter comforts for the men in whom they are primarily interested, and for whom they are really turning out machines as hard as they can.
'Donations in Cash (to the 26th inst.).
The cash donations, up to Monday afternoon last, reached a total of 2185 5s. We regard this result as most encouraging, seeing that it has been obtained in little more than seven days, and that it has been Yielded in response to an appeal which has been made late in the day in relation to the many other appeals which have been produced by the War. It is clearly the special character of our "Campaign Comforts Fund, and the strict application of that Fund to the purchase and despatch of welcome gifts, throughout the coming winter, to drivers and their mates with the heavy vehicles—motor lorries, motor omnibuses, and tractors—at the Front, which account for its general acceptance as worthy of help. There is a bond of fellowship with and good-feeling towards the several thousand men who have so quickly been transferred from ordinary civilian occupations to a succession of arduous military duties in Transport and Supply. Each gift is the tangible expression of a willingness to share the hardships of those men, and above all to ease them. We beg to acknowledge with the deepest gratification remarkable evidences of widespread interest amongst ladies who are associated through their husbands or brothers with the industry. The Editorial office has already been subjected to a slight rearrangement of the furniture, in order to accommodate the first batches of their creation. Help of this kind comes from all over the United Kingdom, and working parties have been arranged in numerous instances. We greatly appreciate this class of help, and we, of course, rely upon our lady helpers to pay regard to the widely-published announcements in respect of usual and useful dimensions for the various woollen things of which we, in our Editorial capacities, have practically no knowledge. It is, of course, out of the question for us to make room in our pages for knitting receipts. One lady has taken in hand the production of gauntlet gloves without individual fingers other than the thumb, of a type which she has ascertained from friends to be in great demand for use by officers and men of the torpedo and submarine flotillas. It is not generally realized by the public at large how cold is winter work in the small or submersible units of our Navy, but the working temperature in those vessels cannot, of course, fall lower than freezing point, whereas many a motor-lorry driver and his mate must continue to work when the temperaturevis many degrees below that dividing line between the liquid and the solid states of the sea.
We are indebted to Allen and Hanburys, Ltd., for a, ease of that company's milk cocoa, and to Bryant and May, Ltd., for 14 gross of that company's patent safety matches. The latter gift is suitably packed in two tin-lined cases, each of which is got up in accordance with the reauirements of the War Office. We may mention incidentally that anybody who cares to send one guinea direct to Bryant and May, Ltd., London, E., can have such a case—sufficient for a. battalion of infantry—sent direct to the Front, carriage paid, if interested in any particular regiment.
Effective Despatch and Distribution.
Thera is no occasion for us to dwell in detail upon the special programme which we have set ourselves to accomplish so far as concerns effective despatch and distribution. As much care will be displayed by us in these regards as in any others. We refer our supporters, iall of whom will naturally be desirous to feel assured that every parcel will duly reach its destination, to the fifth paragraph on the first page of this issue. Its contents will sufficiently indicate the character of the extra precautions, over and above routine compliance with official regulations. which we are taking.
Not a Christmas Fund.
Help is asked, support is wanted, and kindly, sympathetiointerest sought, not for one lot of presents at a time when " cheer " is plentiful, although we shall take good care to have the earliest parcels well on their way long before Christmas. We intend, with assistance from others, to keep the supply of comforts going right through the winter. Every motorist knows that January, February and March have their pinches. We must be ready to make good both wear and tear and the men's losses so far as woollen things go, and to contribute freely towards reasonable consumption so far as tobacco and cigarettes have to be reckoned. Neither end can be attained without help from our friends and the friends of the men with the. wagons.