SOCIAL HYGIENE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11947, 5 March 1917, Page 3

SOCIAL HYGIENE.

MEETING OF WOMEN. A3 the result of the lecture recently delivered by I>r Platts Mills a meeting (convened by the committee formed at the original gathering) was held on Saturday in the Y.M.CA. to establish a body of women to be known as " The Social Hygiene" Society, to take np and prosecute an active campaign against the social evils that so largely demand attention. The chair was occupied by Mrs J. H. Wilson, president of the society, and a member of the Hospital Board. Mrs Wilson oMt lined the aims and objects of the Social Hygiene Society, summed up in the watchword "Knowledge is Power," and stated that tha sympathy of the Public Health Department would be practically shown by generous financial support. Mrs Wilson also spoke ou the educational aspect of the question of social hygiene and pointed out the absolute need for mothers being the trusted and sympathetic confidantes of their cnildren rather than allowing them to seek information from doubtful sources, stressing the point that mothers are the builders and couservers of the race and the Empire and that it is in the home that "habits are formed, character shaped and destiny fixed/' Nurse Maude spoke earnestly on the practical side of the question and urged the necessity for plain dealing with ugly facta. Sister Edith, who has lately returned from England, dealt with the ethical side of the subject, emphasising woman's tremendous responsibility' in what she felt convinced was the beginning of a new spiritual era and declaring that when women realised the extent of their power for good and exercised it in insisting on a higher moral standard then and. then only would society be purified.