Help For China

Surprising Sums Sent from Tahiti

From our Own Correspondent.

Papeete, Nov. 24.

THE events in China have had a pro found effect on the Chinese colony in French Oceania.

While the war raged about Shanghai and in the valley of the Yang-tse River, the Chinese at Tahiti concentrated their efforts on the collection of funds to aid the purchase of war material for the armies.

Committees were formed to visit the several islands. Every Chinaman —even to the lone tiller of the soil in the mountain valleys and the trader on the most remote atoll—was rounded up and urged to contribute. A really astonish ing sum was amassed and sent to Hong Kong.

Most of the Chinese in French Oceania came from Canton, and have families and relations who —since the Japanese invasion of South China — are now refugees in Hong Kong and the hinterland beyond Canton.

The loyalty to family, traditional with the Chinese, is amply proven by the gen erous aid now being sent from Tahiti many merchants have despatched a goodly share of their capital funds, and that others have sacrificed their savings of years to relieve the tragedy which has fallen upon these distant relations and friends.

Mrs. Mollie Lett, well-known resident of Port Moresby, Papua, arrived in Syd ney on December 5, to spend a holiday in Australia.