ROTARY CLUB PRISON WORK

Taranaki Daily News, 25 August 1931, Page 7

ROTARY CLUB PRISON WORK

supreme Court judge’s praise. A tribute to the New Plymouth Rotary Club 'jn its 'work in connection with prison life was paid by Mr. Justice Blair, who was the guest of the club at the weekly luncheon yesterday. “A lot of things in this world,” Mr. Justice Blair said,”, have been accomplished by that elusive thing, sentiment. At the back of the Rotary movement there is what may be called a divine spur, for the feeling that actuates the Rotary movement is absolutely foreign from any question of personal gain.” Referring particularly to the work done by the members of the club at the New Plymouth gaol, His Honour mentioned the number of times the gaol visitors’ book, which he had inspected, contained the name of Rotarian P. E. Stainton.

“That work the club is doing in connection with' the gaol,” he said, “is a wonderful work, and there is no doubt you all live to see the results of it, because we have here a peculiar type of prisoner, an intellectual prisoner who is suffering from a particular kind of mental weakness, and the only way to get at it is through the. brain. The work of the Rotary Club would be a sort of mental tonic. Even if no more than one or two are cured you can be sure that if you do nothing more you are tremendously lightening the burden of tho punishment.” His Honour said it was a very fine wdrk and consonant wi£h all the fine movements in the world which had resulted in the life the world .led being better than it was. . He sincerely congratulated; the club on that sphere of its activities, which he thought seemed to be fraught with very great possibilities.