SIR TRUBY KING

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3477, 13 October 1926, Page 12

SIR TRUBY KING

A WIZARD ON A PEAK. AN AUSTRALIAN TRIBUTE. Miss Ethel Turner in contributing to the ‘‘Sydney Morning Herald” a series of articles about New Zealand, jin one of them she describes how !she visited Sir Truby King's house on one of the heights overlooking Wellington. Then she passed on to the owner. “Here lives Sir Truby King,” she says. "Vision a man slim-built, alert, intensely in earnest, tout bent with long striving and the stress of years—a man whom one would say has never been overstrong physically —vision this man squaring up to a job before which men of the bund of Hercules would falter. “Vision a St. George handicapped in frame, setting out with a spear, made by himself, to attack a dragon The dragon was the Moloch that sacrificed to itself the babies of New Zealand. year by year, decade by decade. "Picture to yourself a young doctor gazing' with puckered brows at the bald statistics of the infantile mortality—the preventable infantile mortality of his country. Imagine him bringing down a clenched fist on the bald statistics and saying: ‘This thing has got to stop. I’m going to stop It.' "Then the attack, the slow inch-by-inch attack on the evil. One falters a little trying' to realise all that is called for in defending helpless, hapless, infants against the ravages of the Moloch of civilsation. One knows how easily little lives are snuffed out even with the wealthy who have means to safeguard them at every point. “But little by little the words ‘Karitane’ and ‘Pftmket’ came to be adopted Into the nation’s real life, and towards the close of the Great War slow-moving' conservative England cabled to the founder to journey round the world in order to establish the New Zealand system at the heart of the Empire, by founding a Karitane hospital and mothercraft training centre at Earl’s Court, London. Since then Australia and South Africa have established similar centres. "Soon after his return to New Zealand the Government appointed St. George Director of Child Welfare to safeguard the health and well-being of little New Zealanders from birth until they enter school. In this capacity he acts in conjunction with the Health Department and the Plunket Society of which,' along with Lady King, he is still joint general president, and the supervising genius and adviser of its 500 branches and subbranches. In addition to these appointments he is now charged with the care and direction of the Mental Hospital Department. Last year he received the tardy honour of knighthood, in recognition of his varied and widespread public services.”