local branches may be mentioned the branch at Sordavala which includes amongst its many activities a crêche in which 180 children are cared for. The local branch at Hangô has opened in its own house a children's day nursery in which there are 97 children. The local branch at Ekenâs has founded a Recreation Home ; that in Nyllykoski, a children's home. The local branch in Kemi has taken charge of about 200 children during their holidays. A great many of the local branches have followed a well-planned popular health instruction programme to improve hygiene and the health of children. Many branches have taken up club work, the aim of which is to bring together young people to do useful and unselfish work. Among other activities in the programmes of the local branches the promotion af outdoor sport among boys may be mentioned. In a skiing race, organized last March by the League, 25 local branches took part. Boys under 12 years of age had to ski two kilometres, those betwen 12 and 15 years skiing three kilometres. So many were the competitors that the entire distance skied by them would have encircled Finland. The local branches have also arranged summer sports. The League of Child Welfare has thus, through the initiative of the local branches, succeeded in covering various branches of child welfare work : the Central Committee, however, prefers to begin its work with three well-defined lines of activity, i.e. educational, hygienic and moral, with the idea of increasing its scope as time goes on. A MOBILE CHILD WELFARE MUSEUM. The League has endeavoured, by means of lectures in different parts of the country, newspaper articles and popular pamphlets on educational and hygienic subjects to increase public interest in its various branches. In this connexion may be mentioned the important work of the Mobile Child Welfare Museum, which, under the care of a fully trained Red Cross nurse, has already been shown at about thirty different places in the north, centre and east of Finland. The museum is open on an average for five days in each place and has, since it was first shown, been visited by about 25,000 people. where in the near future courses will be arranged for those who wish to take up this type of work. The aim of this and other day homes is to provide poor children with a place to spend their free time, to prepare their lessons, to play and to do gymnastics. TRAINING OF SCHOOL NURSES. The League, under the direction of a regularly paid school doctor and a specially trained school nurse, organizes courses for training hospital nurses BUSY LITTLE FINNISH WORKERS, to do school nursing work. It is hoped that the school authorities will find immediate employment in schools for nurses who have completed these courses. Another important activity of the League is the arranging of country holidays for town children, while for those who cannot be taken to the country the League tries to organize games and useful outdoor occupation. Each spring the League gives short courses for training directors in this branch of work, special care being taken that they shall have sufficient knowledge of the organization of various kinds of holiday entertainments. A final and important link in the educational work of the League is the Central Library which is open to all who wish to increase their knowledge of Child Welfare work in all its aspects. The Central Committee of the League has en deavoured to adapt its programme of hygienic activities to the conditions which exist among the children of Finland, as shown by deductions from statistics. Among a million and a quarter children there are tens of thousands who must grow up in conditions which endanger their healthy development. Of the 90,000 children born each year in this country about 10,000 die before they are a year old. Numbers of young children have to suffer from diseases which often entail life-long ill health. The death rate from tuberculosis among school children is higher than in any of the Scandinavian countries. Through educational work, mothers' courses. advisory work, maternal and school nursing, the League hopes to remove the causes of these unfortunate conditions. The duty of the visiting nurse is to register all children born in her district. She teaches and demonstrates home hygiene and mothercraft by means of courses and visits. She records the Physical development of each child from birth to school age, when the school nurse becomes responsible for this task. The English type of child welfare and maternity institution which has reduced infant mortality in England by about one half, as well as the school nurseries which have very greatly raised the standard of health among English school children, have been copied as far as possible by the League for Child Welfare. In order to link up the maternity and child welfare work of the local branches the League has appointed a lady inspector, and has had the privilege of choosing Miss Snellmann, who, through the kindness of the League of Red Cross Societies has had special training in this inmportant work in the latter's Nursing Course in London. In connexion with the work of the League for Child Welfare to promote the physical health of the child mention must be made of the sports competitions organized twice every year in all parts of the country, summer sports being held in September and skiing races in March. These sports are announ ced some weeks before they take place so that the children have sufficient time for training. DAY HOMES. The moral standard of the child calls for as much attention from every patriot in Finland as the question of physical well-being. Bud housing, lack of proper home life in industrial communities, want of time and knowledge on the part of the parents in the care of children produce a very large number of neglected, undisciplined and criminal children and young people. The various kinds of Day Home Institutions are intended to act through all the stages of child life as a complement of the home, in the care and training of the child, either while the parents are away from home working, or are preven. ted, by sickness or any other cause, from exercising a proper supervision of the child. The most important kinds of day homes run by the League are the crêches for children under three years of age, kindergartens in connexion with day homes for children of school age and clubs for children and young persons of 10 to 18 years. The Headquarters of the League hopes later to have a network of clubs where all young people in search of new ideas and ideals can meet, so that the children of all social classes may be led to a better understanding of each other and of life. Besides the work more strictly appertaining to its organization, the League has also, where necessary, given its help to other societies and individuals interested in child welfare; it has, for instance, as far as is possible for a private organization, brought light and happiness into the lives of many of the children in homes belonging to the government and the community by means of Christmas presents, re CHILDREN'S CLUBS. The headquarters of the League for Child Welfare is trying, with the help of the local branches, to institute clubs throughout the country. A club is intended to bring together not less than five and not more than twenty-five children under the leadership of an adult or of an older boy or girl who is considered suitable for such responsibility. Each club has a separate name and statutes. According to the decisions of the members the club work takes the form of different kinds of handicraft, agriculture, gardening or even various branches of study. The clubs for older boys and girls best fulfil their purpose by helping to prepare them for their future trade or profession. Though each club has one special aim, singing, gymnastics and excursions are included in the programme of every club. A CLUBROOM FOR SCHOOLBOYS. gular contribution of a children's paper to each of these homes and arrangement of programmes for holidays. In order to lighten the heavy burden of the refugees from Eeast Karalia the headquarters of the League made an appeal for private homes, the owners of which were willing to take care of refugee children. The answer to this appeal was immediate : in less than one month the League forwarded to the government committee in charge a list of 434 homes examined by the League, willing, without charge, to be responsible for such children. The development which the League has achieved in the two years of its existence, the devotion of local branches to their work, the understanding and support enjoyed by the League and the individual generosity and anxiety to assure the practi cal recognition of the rights of childhood, lead to the conviction that the freedom of Finland will, in the future, be guarded by a nobler, healthier and more united generation. CO-OPERATION WITH THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES. The work accomplished by General Mannerheim's League for Child Welfare seems, through its educational activities and its organization for combating infant mortality, and for raising both the physical and moral condition of young people, to carry out a part of the programme indicated by the League of Red Cross Societies. The educational work performed by the League for Child Welfare, might under these conditions be extended in the direction, on the one hand, of prenatal care, on the other of general hygiene, with the object of preserving the home and the child from infectious disease. This task lies more especially within the sphere of the visiting nurse of the League for Child Welfare, whose duty is to teach and to demonstrate to the mother the proper care of the child from babyhood to school age from birth to seven years. Without unduly disturbing its present work, the League can extend its field of action to correspond with the programme of the League of Red Cross Societies for visiting nurses. The principles of the Junior Red Cross, viz. for children, through their own efforts, to strengthen themselves physically and mentally, and to direct their thoughts to some ideal of unselfishness, can effectively be adopted and put into practice by the League for Child Welfare through the agency of its clubs for boys and girls. A knowledge of the work and aims of the Junior Red Cross could thus be spread throughout the country, making possible the foundation at a later date of Junior Red Cross branches in all the schools of Finland. The adoption of General Mannerheim's plan for the co-operation, not only of the League for Child Welfare, but of all societies in Finland, in the improvement of popular health would undoubtedly reinforce the strength of the Finnish Red Cross and assure the possibility of its adopting an extensive peacetime programme. This co-operation would be very much strengthened if the members of the Finnish Red Cross could call on the full moral support of the League of Red Cross Societies, a support which that League is in a position to give through being recognized, throughout the world, as by Dr. MARCEL LABBÉ, Profesor at the Faculty of Medicine, Paris. In the heart of Constantinople, opposite the University, a milk station, founded on the instigation of General Pellé, High Commissioner of the French Republic, under the auspices of the Association of French Ladies of the French Red Cross, has been open since last January. It is set up in one of the charming old XVIIIth Century fountains with a projecting, ornamental roof, surrounded by a beautiful iron grill through which in olden times fresh water was distributed to the passers-by. To-day the water has changed to milk, all to the advantage of the little Turkish nurslings. This milk station was badly needed. War after war has reduced the people to great poverty, and the flight of the population of Anatolia into the areas occupied by the Greeks has filled Constantinople with a multitude of refugees, who live in a state of unemployment which the government is almost unable to cope with. The result of this is a terrible increase in infant mortality. The milk station includes a waiting room, where the distribution of the milk rations takes place through an open window, a sterilizing room, and, on the first floor, a consulting room, a weighing room and dispensary, and a linen room. A glance at the shoemaker's shop next door to the milk station gives one some idea of the work which had to be done to transform the old stone building, covered with the dirt of centuries, into a shining white dispen sary. This Stamboul milk station, under the direction of Mlle. Paule Vardoux of the Association of French Ladies, who is assisted by two nurses and two servants, is a model of its kind. Twice a week a medical consultation is held by Dr. Puyabert, Chief Medical Officer of the French Hospital, helped by a Turkish assistant, Dr. Ibrahim. The babies, on arrival, are taken to the consul ting room. Here each mother receives a note-book, in which the particulars of her baby are entered. The babies are weighed every ten days. After that, the mothers only have to present themselves at a fixed time to received the milk ration prescribed by the doctor. Beginning at 50, the number of babies attending the station has now increased to 170. Forty-one of these are on mixed feeds (breast and bottle), 59 on cow's milk, and 70 on condensed milk or prepared foods. The results are already noticeable. In ten months there have only been five deaths amongst the children attending the milk station, and not one of THE STAMBOUL MILK STATION |