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Women's War Work

FRIENDS OF CHINA CENTRA OPENS ON KING ST. WEST

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OFFICE OPENED BY FRIENDS OF CHINA
Canadian friends of China opened a downtown centre, at 102 King St. W., last week to co-ordinate aid to the bomb-shocked and inured and 60,000,000 homeless in China. Kathleen Mark, LEFT ABOVE, and her cousin, Lai Yen Mark, RIGHT, take their turn at dong some of the centre's office work. They are checking lucky number tickets for an airplane draw to swell the Friends of China fund.

TORONTO DAILY STAR, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1941

Last week Japan celebrated the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Manchcukuo, the first big step in her 10-year war of aggression upon her neighbor, China. Last week Canadians, appreciating the terrific Chinese struggle for freedom, marked the anniversary by upending a centre in Downton Toronto to raise funds for China's injured and homeless.

The centre is in donated quarters at 102 King St. W., and is operated under auspices of the "The Friends of China" committee, which includes in its membership Hon. Albert Matthews, Hon. Mitchell F. Hepburn, Rev. A, J. Brace, Dr. Gordon Agnew, Hubert Pocock, Mr. Justice Gordon. chairman of the executive committee of the Canadian Red Cross, and Chinese Consul-General Hu Fhi.

The committee will co-ordinate efforts on behalf of China, co-operating with the United China Relief, the International Red Cross and all other organizations, American and Canadian, working on behalf of Chinese war victims.

It will stimulate interest in China's plight, where there is a pitiable lack of anaesthetics, surgical equipment, all kinds of medical supplies, and where a Canadian dollar, transferred into Chinese funds, will provide anaesthesia for three surgical operations, or will feed, clothe and house a war orphan for a month. All money raised by "The Friends of China" committee will be transferred to China by the Red Cross and there distributed by a committee made up of all international relief organizations.

The greatest need is for money for surgical equipment, medical supplies and mobile hospitals.

The committee has purchased a Cub coupe airplane which they are donating for nation-wide lucky number draw and and are holding pageants in various cities to interest the non-Chinese in the need of help for China.

Miss Jean Ewen, graduate nurse from Winnipeg, who spent eight years in China, is helping in the office. She described her own experience with China's lack of facilities to ease the suffering of her people.

"I came back in 1939, but I had been two years with the Chinese Red Cross working just behind the front lines," she said. "We had no permanent hospitals--we set hospitals in bamboo shelters or temples. wherever we could. I don't think anyone could understand what it was like who wasn't there. 

"In one hospital--we called it a hospital, although all we had was a medical centre and had to go from house to house to the patients--we did not have a complete set of surgical instruments. It took months and months for supplies to come to us because we were 150 miles from the nearest road along which an automobile could travel, and before that the goods had to travel from the coast, around the south and up behind the lines."

At another hospital, where there was a staff of 42 to look for 300 beds, there were two temples used as dormitories and a third building which served as a surgery. There was a dynamo to provide light, which the hospital staff had brought with them, but the current was so weak it could only be used sparingly for emergencies.

There was only one change of linen, all the laundry had to be done by hand and in the dry season there was no water to wash and in the wet season no place to dry the linen.

"A person could go on and on," said Miss Ewen. "But I don't think anyone could realize what such conditions are unless they were able to see them." A Canadian dollar, she pointed out, is worth 15 or more Chinese dollars.

One of the biggest problems is to bring aid quickly to the devastated areas, and a big item in the program of "The Friends of China" is to raise $9,000, for which the United Chinese Relief has asked to pay for airplane transportation of medical supplied from the coast to the inland area.

UNIVERSITY GIRLS TRAIN
 
The University Women's Service Training detachment of the Red Cross Corps will extend its activities this year. It will include training in transport driving and maintenance, office administration, food administration and nursing.

The detachment, headed by Miss A. E. M. Parkes as commandant, was launched on the University of Toronto campus last year, to give whatever co-eds who desired it training to be useful in wartime. The girls took military drill and preliminary training in office administration.

This year, Miss Parkes has announced, the corps will open other sections to study army transport, food administration and auxiliary nursing.

Miss Parkes said that of 200 students who signed for the course last term, 170 completed their instruction and are qualified to continue advanced training. The detachment will not be given university trucks and wrenches, but will be instructed in transport at one of the schools maintained by automobile manufacturers in various centres throughout Canada.

The University of Toronto and Queen's university at Kingston are the only two Canadian universities offering this instruction. The training detachment will qualify girls, upon finishing their courses, for admission to the Canadian Red Cross Corps, which has divisions of trained volunteer women in most large Canadian cities.