The mere male novelist who takes pen to write on infants awaits the
polished comment: "He knows nothing of the subject--rubbish; pure
rubbish!" One must run that risk.
In the report of the National Baby Week it is written:--"Is it worth
while to destroy our best manhood now unless we can ensure that there
will be happy, healthy citizens to carry on the Empire in the future?" I
confess to approaching this subject from the point of view of the infant
citizen rather than of the Empire. And I have wondered sometimes if it
is worth while to save the babies, seeing the conditions they often have
to face as grown men and women. But that, after all, would be to throw
up the sponge, which is not the part of a Briton. It is written
also:--"After the war a very large increase in the birth-rate may be
looked for." For a year or two, perhaps; but the real after-effect of
the war will be to decrease the birth-rate in every European country, or
I am much mistaken. "No food for cannon, and no extra burdens," will be
the cry. And little wonder! This, however, does not affect the question
of children actually born or on their way. If not quantity, we can at
all events have quality.
I also read an account of the things to be done to keep "baby" alive,
which filled me with wonder how any of us old babies managed to survive,
and I am afraid that unless we grow up healthy we are not worth the
trouble. The fact is: The whole business of babies is an activity to be
engaged in with some regard to the baby, or we commit a monstrous
injustice, and drag the hands of the world's clock backwards.
How do things stand? Each year in this country about 100,000 babies die
before they have come into the world; and out of the 800,000 born, about
90,000 die. Many mothers become permanently damaged in health by evil
birth conditions. Many children grow up mentally or physically
defective. One in four of the children in our elementary schools are not
in a condition to benefit properly by their schooling. What sublime
waste! Ten in a hundred of them suffer from malnutrition; thirty in the
hundred have defective eyes; eighty in the hundred need dental
treatment; twenty odd in the hundred have enlarged tonsils or adenoids.
Many, perhaps most, of these deaths and defects are due to the avoidable
ignorance, ill-health, mitigable poverty, and other handicaps which dog
poor mothers before and after a baby's birth. One doesn't know which to
pity most--the mothers or the babies. Fortunately, to help the one is to
help the other. In passing I would like to record two sentiments: my
strong impression that we ought to follow the example of America and
establish Mothers' Pensions; and my strong hope that those who visit the
sins of the fathers upon illegitimate children will receive increasingly
the contempt they deserve from every decent-minded citizen.
On the general question of improving the health of mothers and babies I
would remind readers that there is no great country where effort is half
so much needed as here; we are nearly twice as town and slum ridden as
any other people; have grown to be further from nature and more feckless
about food; we have damper air to breathe, and less sun to disinfect us.
In New Zealand, with a climate somewhat similar to ours, the infant
mortality rate has, as a result of a widespread educational campaign,
been reduced within the last few years to 50 per 1,000 from 110 per
1,000 a few years ago. It is perhaps too sanguine to expect that we, so
much more town-ridden, can do as well here, but we ought to be able to
make a vast improvement. We have begun to. Since 1904, when this matter
was first seriously taken in hand, our infant mortality rate has
declined from 145 per 1,000 to 91 per 1,000 in 1916. This reduction has
been mainly due to the institution of infant welfare centres and
whole-time health visitors. Of centres there are now nearly 1,200. We
want 5,000 more. Of visitors there are now hardly 1,500. We want, I am
told, 2,000 more. It is estimated that the yearly crop of babies,
700,000, if those of the well-to-do be excepted, can be provided with
infant welfare centres and whole-time health visitors by expenditure at
the rate of £1 a head per year. The Government, which is benevolently
disposed towards the movement, gives half of the annual expenditure; the
other half falls on the municipalities. But these 5,000 new infant
welfare centres and these extra 2,000 health visitors must be started by
voluntary effort and subscription. Once started, the Government and the
municipalities will have to keep them up; but unless we start them, the
babies will go on dying or growing up diseased. The object of the Jewel
Fund, therefore, is to secure the necessary money to get the work into
train.
What are these Infant Welfare Centres, and have they really all this
magic? They are places where mothers to be, or in being, can come for
instruction and help in all that concerns birth and the care of their
babies and children up to school age. "Prevention is better than cure,"
is the motto of these Centres. I went to one of the largest in London.
It has about 600 entries in the year. There were perhaps 40 babies and
children and perhaps 30 mothers there. About 20 of these mothers were
learning sewing or knitting. Five of them were sitting round a nurse who
was bathing a three-weeks-old baby. The young mother who can wash a baby
to the taste and benefit of the baby by the light of nature must clearly
be something of a phenomenon. In a room downstairs were certain little
stoics whose health was poor; they were brought there daily to be
watched. One was an air-raid baby, the thinnest little critter ever
seen; an ashen bit of a thing through which the wind could blow; very
silent, and asking "Why?" with its eyes. They showed me a mother who had
just lost her first baby. The Centre was rescuing it from a pauper's
funeral. I can see her now, coming in and sitting on the edge of a
chair; the sudden puckering of her dried-up little face, the tears
rolling down. I shall always remember the tone of her voice--"It's my
_baby_." Her husband is "doing time"; and want of food and knowledge
while she was "carrying it" caused the baby's death. Several mothers
from her street come to the Centre; but, "keeping herself to herself,"
she never heard of it till too late. In a hundred little ways these
Centres give help and instruction. They, and the Health Visitors who go
along with them, are doing a great work; but there are many districts
all over the country where there are no Centres to come to; no help and
instruction to be got, however desperately wanted. Verily this land of
ours still goes like Rachel mourning for her children. Disease, hunger,
deformity, and death still hound our babes, and most of that hounding is
avoidable. We must and shall revolt against the evil lot, which
preventible ignorance, ill health, and poverty bring on hundreds of
thousands of children.
It is time we had more pride. What right have we to the word "civilised"
till we give mothers and children a proper chance? This is but the Alpha
of decency, the first step of progress. We are beginning to realise
that; but, even now, to make a full effort and make it at once--we have
to beg for jewels.
What's a jewel beside a baby's life? What's a toy to the health and
happy future of these helpless little folk?
You who wear jewels, with few exceptions, are or will be mothers--you
ought to know. To help your own children you would strip yourselves. But
the test is the giving for children not one's own. Beneath all flaws,
fatuities, and failings, this, I solemnly believe, is the country of the
great-hearted. I believe that the women of our race, before all women,
have a sense of others. They will not fail the test.
Into the twilight of the world are launched each year these myriads of
tiny ships. Under a sky of cloud and stars they grope out to the great
waters and the great winds--little sloops of life, on whose voyaging the
future hangs. They go forth blind, feeling their way. Mothers, and you
who will be mothers, and you who have missed motherhood, give them their
chance, bless them with a gem--light their lanterns with your jewels!
1917.