"SAVE THE BABIES."

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 286, 3 December 1925, Page 10

"SAVE THE BABIES."

« PLUNKET'S » GOOD WORK. | OUK BEST IMMIGRANTS. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") DUNEDDf, this day. In welcoming the Plunket Society delegates the Hon. C. E. Statham, M.P., said he noticed that the expenditure of the society was now something over £54,000 a year, towards which the Government contributed about one-third, and he felt sure that, whatever Government happened to be in power, whatever amount they liked to place on the Estimates in aid of the society, it would have the easiest passage through the House of Representatives that anything could possibly have. He-would like to point out something which might seem to be a small thing, but which he believed to be a very big thing. The mere fact of their society communicating with other countries, especially foreign countries, on a humanitarian matter of this kind roust mean that they ■were doing something to bring about world peace. Some people had asked him what was the use of the Plunket Society "keeping alh'e children who would be better dead," and so on, but the society had given a splendid answer to such questions by reducing the New Zealand infant death rate to the lowest in the world, and it was doing something to bring that death-rate down in other parts of the world. By that alone the society had justified its existence. The very best "immigrant" we could possibly have was the child born in New Zealand. That was the child they wanted to look after. ■ Sir Truby King said they had had a splendid backing from the Government, which now had trusted them with £14,500 for the purpose of doing what was possible in lowering maternal mortality. They would not be satisfied till the maternal mortality rate was reduced to not more than one-third of what it now stood at. That rechiction would result, also, in the saving of many lives among babies.