This annual contribution by the BCN is very appreciated. The food was plentiful, well prepared and very tasty. All was done at their expense. The BCN really show love and appreciation to us Ex-Servicemen and we commend their hospitality and charity. Their praises should not continue to go unsung, and so I thunder this public THANK YOU to them.

It is unfortunate that among ourselves, this love and caring is not evident. It took an Englishman to come all the way to our little Belize to tell us that veterans are suffering because of bad management. We have a bully sitting in the chair and a President who speaks with a twisted tongue. The Chairman stopped me from doing my duty and the President called the police to have me removed from the premises when I wanted to let a Canadian visitor from the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Servicemen League know the truth about what was happening, saying he couldn?t allow me to spoil his meeting. The visitor was inquiring about veterans? welfare, and I was excluded from the meeting, even though I am a representative of the Belize City Branch on the Executive of the League. Instead of being allowed to speak, I was taken to the police station.

The League started with men of clean hearts concerned with building an institution to help their brothers. Now it seems that there is the effort to destroy what they built. There are wolves among the sheep who are unable to help themselves. It is for this reason that I keep sending an SOS for help from outside.

I noticed someone mentioned Mr. Clifford Betson in the Amandala recently. Mr. Betson is the person who kept relating his life in the First World War and who encouraged me to join the British Honduras Defence Force in 1937.

Mr. Betson, one of Belize?s best boat builders, was a founding member of the Belize Ex-Servicemen League and one of its first officers. I have a picture of Mr. Betson and his councilors that formed the Ship Carpenters? Union. The difficulty at that time was that other workers were unwilling to join until the name was changed to General Workers Union. I was an early member of that union. Mr. Betson lost a lot of his customers because he led the charge for higher wages for labour. I will have more later about Clifford Betson. An able Creole.

Arthur Belisle