The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1917. SAVE THE BABIES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17125, 29 October 1917, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1917. SAVE THE BABIES.

" An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, 0

And with no language buta cry.'; In the words of one of the foremost medical authorities of Australasia:

'"There is ro subject of greater ■moment ti any country than the health of its people, anl particularly of the children. It is the basis of n; tioiia.l sell-preserva-tion, and the r ir£t requisite to jpower and prosperity. 'The very foundation of the whole Commonwealth is tbe proper bringing up ef the young,' saia Cicero, ar.d we. knew the words to be truer now than wten he spoke. It is an axiom that &t-cial progress must? commence with the infant, and that our efficiency as a people is wrapped up in life's beginning." Equally cogent-, a,nd pertinent to the movement which is this week to be conducted throughout the.Dominion, under the auspices of the Royal N.Z. Society for the Health of Women and Children, is ths further statement by the same authority : " Let me direct your attention to a fact that oft-it. goes unrecognised, namely, that the s'lrae influences which prevail in bringing about the birth of so few and the death of so many infants, produce (physical' degeneration in those that have escaped with their lives. In other words, the numbers, of" the killed are but a, fraction of those that are wounded, and the mortality rate serves as an index of the amount of harm inflicted on the living." He quotes Dr Chalmers, of Glasgow, who said: " The dead baby is nest-of-kin to the diseased baby, who in time becomes the anaemic, ill-fed, and educationally backward child, from whom is derived, later in We, the unskilled casual who is at the bottom of so many of our problems." To-day, perhaps more than ever before, all the babies are needed. Yet we have a singular way of showing that v.-c want them. In the Old Country eleven babies are allowed to die every hour. In 1915 870,000 ba.bies were born in England, but 95,700 died before the year was over. According to expert opinion, half of them need not have died. In Australia, the statistics tell the same tale. Sir Charles K. Mackellar, the president of the Royal Commission appointed in 1903 to inquire into the decline of the birth-rate and the excessive mortality of infants, writes :—"During the last two and a half years, which ended at | the close of 1916, the cream of our [manhood has been swept away .by war, in Egypt, France, and Belgium alone, to the extent of no fewer than 17,672 lives, to say nothing of those who have died after their return to Australia, or the many thousands who have been i crippled by wounds or permanently eni'eebled by disease, so that they can no longer be reckoned effective members of our but-sparse!y peopled country— and during the satos period we have lost by death in the Commonwealth approximately 32,000 children under five years of age, of whom probably about 23,360 died before they had completed their first year of life." That we, too, have to plead guilty to permitting the sn.mß terrible is evidenced by the startling fact that nearly 1500 babies die every year in New Zealand, that it is estimated by competent authorities that at ".er.st as many die during the nine\ months before birth; and that most of this srorifice of life is preventable. It is to be hoped that the educational efforts to be made tlhis week will serve <o bring home to the great body of the public the vital and urgent importance of the whole subject.