The Plunket Society.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19972, 5 July 1930, Page 16

The Plunket Society.

It would be easy, bat not useful, to say of the Plunket Society's annual report that it leaves criticism without a leg to stand on. No one any longer thinks of criticising the Society, and we have pointed out more than once before that the danger-point is reached when criticism dies down. It is of course good to know that the Society's membership is greater than it has ever been before, that its income is greater, and that the generosity of its supporters has been shown in more various ways. It is better still to know that it is about to move into a new home, of its own choice, and that no one for fifteen years will be ablfe to disturb it. But a far more encouraging fact than any of these is the direction in which its present successes are leading it. The Society sees, and says, that all its achievements to date are the prelude to the real battle. It has saved the babies. It has still to save the children between the cradle and the school, and

sooner or later all the people of all ages and stages who are destroying themselves by ignorance and neglect. Its pre-school work, its report says, at present "awaits development." But it knows what the problem is, and to enable people in general to know it brought Mr Renfrew White last night from Dunedin. In other words, it knows, as Dr. Lester pointed out, not only that it is the medium now between the mother and the science of preventive medicine, but that medicine one day will mean prevention and nothing else, and that the task of the Society will be •to bring people into line with its teaching. It is so big a task that to think of it in relation to our present facilities and resources is to be filled with something like despair; and yet it is no bigger relatively than the Society s task was when it set out twenty years ago to teach mothers how to save their babies. Everybody knows now that miracles are possible. In those days hardly anyone knew, and the change is entirely its own work.