MELANESIAN MISSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19740, 13 September 1927, Page 15

MELANESIAN MISSION.

VOLUNTEERS FOR SERVICE.

AN ENGAGED COUPLE'S OFFER. [from our own correspondent.] LONDON. Aug. 13. The Rev. L. E. Cartridge, B.A. (Oxon), chaplain at Hurstpierpoint College, has volunteered for service in the Melanesian Mission. Mr. Cartridge is engaged to be married to Miss Atkinson, who also is prepared to cast in her lot with the mission when suitable arrangements can be made. Their acceptance, remarks the compiler of the Southern Cross Log, must be mainly a question of extra funds Their service, of course, would be in the existing missionary diocese, not in the Mandated Territory The mission would require to be able to pay stipends, passages, and also to build a house tOr them costing about £SOO. An offer has aiso been received from a second Cambridge doctor. Althougn fully qualified he has to wait another year before he can take his M.B. degree, and then he will take the tropical course, so it will be about, two years before he is -ready to go to Melanesia. There can be no doubt whatever of the great opportunity," says the Log, "that would be given for much-needed extension of the health work in the mission by a further reinforcement of the medical element, following up the splendid lead given by Dr. Maybury and Miss John-son-Raines. "So much may depend upon whether the problem of sanitation in Melanesia is tackled effectually without delay._ It may be a question between a healthy Christian progress for the native population and a dwindling into extinction of at least a great part of it. Whether the mission is able to afford another doctor will depend on the support given to the medical fund in the next year or so. We cannot look for it from any other source. And if the mission is to rise to the measure of its spiritual responsibilities an increase of at least £SOOO in its income is necessary." Miss F. E. Johnson-Raines, University College s Hospital, London, is a volunteer for service in Melanesia. A set of stoles and a picket set of communion vessels have been presented to the mission by Mrs. Webber Jones, of Chichester. These articles belonged to her late husband, the Rev. Webber Jones.