THE WORK AND THE MAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 112, 15 May 1939, Page 8

THE WORK AND THE MAN

Christopher Wren's best monument is his work; and the same thing can he said of most of the world's greatest. They leave behind them work which is an inspiration, like Wren's; sometimes they leave behind them not merely completed work, but continuing and vital work, which, started by the original creative brain, does not end with its death—work that is continuously expanding and is actively fruitful. To this high order of workers belongs the late Sir Truby King. Preserving the balance between the work and the man, the authors of the Truby King memorial appeal have set £5000 as their objective, of which £300 is to be invested on the grave (through "a bronze plaque or other monument"), £100 is to be invested in a portrait in Truby King House (Sir Truby King's old home) at Melrose, and the balance of £4600 will be devoted to the still greater monument of "providing a post-graduate course for Plunket and Karitane nurses" and to endowment purposes. The appeal therefore accords with the objective outlined at the Dominion conference in November by Mrs. Cecil Wood, of Christchurch, who spoke of "the work" as "a living memorial greater far, we feel, than the greatest and most beautiful thing done in stone or marble." Marble thus appears in the appeal in its proper proportion to the living monument which Sir Truby King began to erect nearly half a century ago, and which, unlike marble or stone, knows no limits in its human usefulness.

It is not to be supposed, of course, that the final word will ever be said on the age-old subject of what to do for the baby. But it will iaot be

denied that in the early years of this century Sir Truby King put new life into the never-ending question of infant feeding. About the same time, or even earlier, Dr. Cockayne was applying new methods to a plant life which was almost unique in the world, and was beginning a research that led up to the Darwin Medal. But Dr. Truby King pioneered not in a unique field, but in a field of infantile welfare as old as time itself; not in a peculiar race of plant life, but in the common field of human life, he taught the world methods it did not know—and, unlike Lord Rutherford, did not have to go out of New Zealand to do so. It is an inspiration to young New Zealanders to know that so much can be done within, as well as beyond, the borders of their native country. Therefore no one will stint his liberality towards the appeal- made by the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society) for a national memorial (much more than a mere . stone or marble commemoration) to the late Sir Truby King, whose mission, as well as the memory, of him, will benefit by the offering. Truby King House, of course, was bequeathed to the society by Sir Truby King for mothercraft work, and it is here, in a grave, side by side, that he and his wife lie. It is not inappropriate that the eminence now enjoys the historic name of Melrose.