OUR BABIES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15340, 1 October 1917, Page 6

OUR BABIES.

By HYGEIA; Published . under tho auspices of the Boyal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women, and Children. "It is wiser-to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." SAVING THE BABIES IN ENGLAND. Lloyd George's scheme for a "Save the Babies' Week" i\the Old Country has done much to enhance interest in the welfare of mother and child—an interest which had already been quickened throughout the whole world _by the appalling and continuous sacrifice of life due to the Great War. WHAT THE LONDON TIMES SATS. Had our infant mortality been as low as that of New Zealand, we should have saved 100,000 babies during the first two years of the war—a number nearly equal to our men killed at the front. Second to the fighting forces, child wastage is absolutely the most urgent national problem in each belligerent country. Whatever the outcome of the war, the future of each nation will depend on the quality and virility of its citizens in the next two or three decades. However, the championing of the cause of mother and child at Home has not been limited to The Times and the Prime Minister. Lord Rhondda has also taken the matter up, as a member of the Cabinet. He has proposed that a Ministry of Health shall be established at once, not only to compensate as far as possible for the wastage of war-time, but also a tardy recognition of the fact that the children of the race are the "Trustees of the future." If the children are not better born and, better reared from now onwards than they have been during our time, our successors will be in an even worse plight than ourselves with regard to "unfits and inefficients" both as regards Military Service and Motherhood. Some data for Lord Bhondda's plea are set forth in a recent issue of the Daily Mail by a physician, who writes as follows under the heading—

SAVE THE BABULS. THE NEED FOR A HEALTH MINISTRY. "Upwards of 100,000 children under five years of age die each year in England according to the most recent estimate of the best-informed medical administrators. For the four years 19111914 the exact figure was 575,078—a figure which represents more than a quarter of all the deaths at all ages. "This clearly is an appalling state of affairs, for by far t<he greater part of that loss is avoidable loss. Since the war began we have suffered fearful depletion of our numbers on the battlefield, but behind the battlefield, in the homes, our loss has been equally terrible. "In the homes we have lost in these two and a half years, using the above reckoning, 360,000 children under five years of age. Moreover, the men who died in France died gloriously, selling their lives for England in a supreme cause; but the children who died, died miserably, and there was nothing of glory or good in that sacrifice. No military failure, however disastrous, ever spent life to less purpose than this toll of splendid life has been spent. Like a gambler, reckless to misfortune, has cast away these pledges of her strength and greatness. "It is evident that this burning of the candle at both ends cannot continue. In peace-time this annual sacrifice to Moloch was dreadful enough; in war-time it spells ruin. Our birth-rate falls and falls, the best and bravest of our race are cut. off, and t>he children who might have perpetuated their splendid qualities are allowed to die by the hundred thousand. There is only one possible end to this progress. Saving of infant life is no longer a question of charity, it is no longer a question of social reform, it is no longer a question of economic reorganisation, or even a question of man-power. It is to-day a question of national existence, the greatest of all the questions bearing upon that problem. "It is for this reason that every man and woman in England to-day is personally concerned in the proposal which Lord Rhondda has made that a Ministry of Health should forthwith be instituted. That is no new proposal, for the Daily Mail made the suggestion years ago, as the present writer remembers very well. At that time, however, the idea that saving infant life concerned the Government of the country was not accepted. Now the suggestion appears in a very different light, and Lord Rhondda's proposal is being discussed on every hand with the greatest eagerness. LIFE'S CRITICAL DATS. "Just recently it was found at a great military hospital that a high proportion of young men who broke down in health as the result of training or service had been unable to play games at school. They had been unfit in most cases ever since they could remember That army of unfits stands in the same re'ation to the babies who die as do the wounded on the battlefield to the killed. "That army, too, must be won for England in the days between the cradle and the schoolroom —which are by far the most critial days, in the health sense, in a human life. Lord Rhondda's scheme, if it' succeeds," may mean the annual securing to the country of as many as 300,000 fit men and women who would have been lost and crippled. That is its full and complete justification, and that is the reason why it deserves the help and support of every patriotic man and woman in the country."