VICTORY OVER BLINDNESS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 305, 22 November 1934, Page 6

VICTORY OVER BLINDNESS.

That to-day, sixteen years after the cessation of the World War,, the work of that famous institution, St. Dunstan’s, is still as great and necessary as ever it was is borne out in the nineteenth report of the organisation. There is little need to recapitulate the wonderful service St. Dunstan’s has performed and is still undertaking- for the warblinded heroes for whom it cares ; its name is a household word. But it is necessary to remember that the numbers requiring its beneficent training have not ceased, but that day by day the effects of the conflict are manifesting themselves among numbers of ex-servicemen who are through various causes losing the supreme gift of sight. Appropriately, the executive council of St. Dunstan’s recalls the popular war-time enlistment phrase "for the duration” ; this to the council has taken, on an even deeper significance—it implies the necessity of caring for every warblinded ex-serviceman so long' as he needs such care. Those who came under the institution’s training in the war years totalled fifteen hundred; since then there have been added another five hundred, and the total ‘‘family” for which service is being rendered, counting the dependants of all these men, is over seven thousand. The average age of the men is forty-five, so that, as the report says, “in the ordinary course of events, the Biblical span allows them twenty-five more years of blindness.” It may seem strange, to. term the work of this organisation that of showing the afflicted how to “learn to be blind” ; yet that is precisely what St. Dunstan’s has been doing since its inception under that great patriot Sir Arthur Pearson, whose disciple, a blind ex-soldier, Sir lan Fraser, is carrying on with remarkable acumen and inspiring influence the same high qualities of leadership. It is appropriate, with the recent visit of Sir lan to the Dominion still fresh in our minds, that New Zealand should take fresh cognisance .of what St. Dunstan’s has achieved and is still carrying, out, for men from our own Dominion have benefited by it. In general war-blinded men have been enabled to turn darkness into light, adversity into opportunity, black despair into renewed hope. Not only they been taught to become proficient in some new craft or occupation—they have been made to realise, by precept and example, and in a thousand and one ways that blindness need not be a tragedy. They have learned that there is a new philosophy ol independence. But they still need a helping hand, and it is patent from the record ot bt. Dunstan’s that they will receive it “for the duration. The results of the training are a remarkable achievement—a triumph of re-education and hope against great odds.