LOVER OF CHILDREN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 20 January 1931, Page 9

LOVER OF CHILDREN

BARRIE’S ARTFUL SPEECH PLEA FOR FAMOUS HOSPITAL Sir James Barrie, Bart., 0.M., of “Peter Pan” fame, was in his happiest fantastical, whimsical vein in his speech, as chairman, at an appeal dinner in London, on behalf of tho Hospital for Sick Children, to which lie presented, last year, tho royalties of “Peter Pan” for all time. Explaining that he preferred to be called “the chair,’’ Sir James had much to say that was quaintly original and amusing, as the extracts which follow show:—

“I know a boy of four, who, when lie wakes up and sees the sun, calls out: Good morning, God. His own idea. Horrible. I saw the eclipse of two or three years ago.i There were hundreds of thousands of us on a Yorkshire hill, reverent, appalled; bub there was also, of course, the inevitable child. What was he doing in the one thrilling moment of his life ? He was trying to catch earwigs in the part of a soap-dish that had holes in it. ‘‘lt is said that mothers like best the children who give them the most trouble. I suppose Cain was Eve’s favourite. “One of the more artful things Lord Macmillan' is likely to do this evening is ,to invite you to come to the hospital and judge for yourselves. That sounds fair, but don’t you do if. If you do that he has got you. It would be impossible for any Bigly, which is what children call you, to go round those wards without writing in a Wobbly, which is what they call your cheque book, or producing a Crinkly, which is their name for a fiver. While Lord Macmillan is getting at you, you hold my hand and I’ll pull you through. “Those patients in the hospital beds — I don’t know whether they are following the instructions of Lord Macmillan, or whether it is just their own natural depravity, or whether in some moment of aberration I have put them up to it nyself —but small as they are, as soon as you enter they will immediately look smaller. “You may take it from me that this is a deliberate design to melt you. They know that there is a degree of smallness a sick child can reach which is boy Did putting up with. There they are, iying broken in their cots, making the most of their illness, their bandages, their shrunken forms; the girls listless, with dolls beside them neglected as if they needed somo one to teach them what a child does with a doll.

THE LUCKY ONES

“They are just playing a game with their long faces. They aro so hippy in those cosy bods that soon they burst into merriment because you are pitying them, and they hug their dolls" as if they knew all about, them, and they dive beneath their blankets and kick with joy, and peep at your mischievously over the coverlet—all because they are the lucky ones who have cots in the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. Now, perhaps, is the time for you to cut and run. “You see from the programme that Mr Justice Eve is to speak about il.c medical and nursing staffs, and I know ■he will havo such fine things to say of them that lam rather alarmed. I merely ask him to say yes or no to two or three questions. Kindly conceive Mr Justice Eve stepping into the witnessbox and looking around him curiously as if ho had gone into the wrong compartment. Now, sir, I say sharply to him, do you dare to stand there and tell

me that much of the work of the medical staff of this hospital, nobly helped by famous physicians and surgeons from outside, consists of investigations into the causes of children s ailments which are thus in time modified or even banished from the world? His damping answer is yes. Take care, witness ! Because of their devotion do these eminent physicians give up all tho accommodation that is rightly theirs to the children, and carry on their researches in the very holes and corners of the hospital? “Yes, again! . . -” “I have, seen enough of our medical and nursing staff to know that however hard-heartedly wo refuse our succour, they will disregard their own worldly interests and go on fighting for the. children. . • • The hospital will stall go on been use they will never forsake it. The light from Great Ormond Street will still burn, but it may have in the future to be a smaller light, instead of tho glowing beacon it could become if you and yours and others like you would say—‘lt shall.’