TEMPERANCE COLUMN

Otago Witness, Issue 4033, 30 June 1931, Page 7

TEMPERANCE COLUMN

[Published by arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.) ‘ THE CHILD’S S.O.S. THE CALL OF THE CHILD. By Guy Hayler. (Honorary secretary, World International League Against Alcoholism.) This very fine lecture will be published iii three parts. I. ” When a man would build to a lasting finish, he must found his building'over a child. In the school-satchel lie the keys of to-morrow. What gate shall be opened into that morrow, whether a gate of horn, »r the gate of ivory, where through the inheritors of our own poor day passed surrounded by so many vain dreams into their inheritance, must rest with them who are still

In that sweet age, When Heaven’s our side the lark.” —Francis Thompson. It was Phillips Brooks who once said: “He who helps a child helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness which no other help given to human creatines in any stage of their human life can give.” We all feel the truth of that statement. To help a child is to help the world, and ‘‘no man stands so straight as when he stoops to help a child. The same is true of governments.” The Declaration of Geneva cannot be repeated too often. "* Mankind owes to the child the best that it has to give.” Nations may be called enemies because of men’s disputes and misunderstandings, but there are no enemy children. They exist, they never have existed. “ The universal sympathy felt for a child in suffering,” said Professor Gilbert Murray, “ is perhaps the clearest of all marks of human brotherhood.” The child lelongs to all ages and to all climes. ENGLAND’S TEN MILLION CHILDREN. There are over 10,000,000 children in England and Wales of the age of 15 years and below. In 1929 the total population stood at something like 39,600,000, which means that 25 per cent, of all the men, women, and children in England and Wales are boys and girls of not more than 15 years old. .How shall we view so vast a responsibility of unfolding child life? In comparison with other years, much more is being done for child care and protection than formerly. When the Royal Commission on Labour of Young Persons in Mines and Manufacturies was appointed (1841), boys and girls under 10 years of age were working underground in mines. Even 25 years later children of tender years were employed in climbing up chimneys to sweep them. But during the past SO years the Mines Acts, the Factory Acts, the Education Acts, the Prevention ef Cruelty to Children Acts, and the Children’s Act. dealing with the liquor traffic, with which Lady Astor had so much to do, have all gone on to the Statute Book. And it would certainly seem that, since the war, there has been an awakening of ■ public consciousness to child welfare which is decidedly encouraging. Even so, there are yet long avenues of service to travel if the child, “ above and beyond all considerations of race, nationality, and creed,” is to be given “ the means required for its normal development, both material and spiritual,” if one may again quote from that world-famous declaration.

It has been said that a very large percentage of all London’s children die before they reach the age of five, and this despite all the many centres of child welfare that there are in the metropolis. How much more then there is to do. There are few of England’s 10,000,000 children who live outside walking distance of licensed premises; there are fewer still whose homes are outside the influence of liquor advertisements which flaunt their slogans through press, and post, and publie hoarding. Only with the utmost patience and care, and then with no certainty, is the child—through the love and affection of the parents—led into youthhood and womanhood with a deep-rooted conviction that the pathway of total abstinence from alcoholic liquors is the only safe way. . . Said that eminent doctor. Sir Lauder Brunton: “It is very hard to change the ways of thinking and acting in adults. The most practical way is to begin with the boys and girls.” The training of young life should begin in the home, be continued in the school, the college, and the university, and insisted upon in the office, the workshop the factory, and the mine. This training should be the very real concern of the Church, through whose ministers and laymen much could be done, until the practice of total abstinence has won its way to the heart of the community. If liquor fails to get the next generation it is doomed. It often frustrates some of its own designs by killing the parents, but the margin is wide, and there are fresh fields in which to work. While teaching one generation to drink, it is halfway preparing the ground in the nurseries of the next.

NEW FACTS TELL THE OLD STORY. Some few years ago, the editor of Woman’s Life stated that “ Millions of babies never live long enough to talk; millions more never live long enough to walk; and millions more never live long enough to go to school.” This was attributed largely to drunken parents, who through time, waste and money waste, neglect and ignorance, were careless of their charges. . . . In the 1929-30 report of the National Society for the. Prevention of Cruelty to Children we read that drink “is still responsible for 10.97 per cent, of the cases of the year.” Out of 43,043 cases inquired into by this society, involving the well-being of 107,172 children, no fewer than 4722 were due to drink. And we may well ask, what about the children who never come under the vigilant eye of this society? What indeed! We can’t spend more than £.268,800,000 every year in alcoholic liquors without the little children having

to foot the bill somewhere along the way. There are children ill-fed, illclothed, ill-housed, and ill-cared-for in other ways who never become “cases” for a society to investigate. The infant death rate in the first year of life in England and Wales in 1929 was 76 per 1000: in Scotland it was as high as 92 per 1000, Those figures indicate a problem, and closely identified with, that problem will be found the insidious influence of the traffic in intoxicating liquors. After a whole heap of the child misery to be found in this and other lands there are no statistics, but let it not be thought that life goes without its reckoning. What we sow, we reap. It is life’s inevitable law.