* * * * A letter in Wednesday's Daily Telegraph
on the predicament of an officer who sent his four children to America soon after his return from Dunkirk, contains statements so incredible that I withhold comment till an official reply to the letter is forth- coming. The officer, of course, desires to reimburse the Ameri- can hosts, not themselves wealthy people, for the expenses in which their generous hospitality involves them, but he cannot do that till after the war, because no remittances at all can be sent at present. Now—to quote the letter textually—" the Army Pay Office has informed him that he cannot send remittances to his family, which he already knew, but that unless he does send remittances to his family he is not entitled to family allow- ances, and they will cease forthwith." Whatever explanation of this intimation may be offered, the incident supplies one more indictment of the Treasury's shortsighted and unimaginative obduracy in compelling British wives and children in America to depend not only for food and shelter, but even for pocket-money, on the generosity of their hosts. Hospitality protracted over years
can become a financial burden which was never anticipated, and to prevent husbands and parents who are only too anxious to
pay what they can from doing so bids fair to convert warm- heartedness and welcome into dissatisfaction and strain.
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