A SPECIAL APPEAL.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sra,—The Lancaster Road School for Mothers is appealing for ..£300. It needs £300 to maintain a good creche for small children in Notting Dale. It received £300 a year ago from your readers, and opened the creche, and already has worked wonders in Notting Dale. I have seen the work, and know how good it is. Nothing of its kind could be better.
" The Board of Education," one of the Committee writes to me, " gives us grants, and would pay a much larger proportion of our expenses if we would eliminate all the babies not belonging to munition workers. We talked it over in Committee, but we decided against the offer, for we have about half and half, and many of the non-munition babies are improving so much and doing so excellently that we simply can't send them back to ill- health and neglect. Many mothers cannot do munition work— they are not strong enough, or they can do better work in other directions; and it seems so brutal to refuse their babies—who
are every whit as important, even to the State, as the munition- babies. So we decided to struggle on on present lines, and it remains to be seen whether we shall win through or not."
The School for Mothers teaches and advises and befriends the mothers—not pauperizing, nor patronizing, but real friendship— helps to feed and clothe the children, provides medical care for them, and gives them the use of two playrooms, a bathroom, and a bit of garden. Visitors are always welcome, and regular helpers are needed. All this year it has been quietly protecting or saving lives in one of the very poorest parts of London. They are only small children, but we shall want all of them after the war.
I do earnestly beg for £300, in donations or subscriptions. Especially I beg for subscriptions. I am writing from the Anglo- Russian Hospital in Petrograd. Here, in this beautiful hospital, our patients have every comfort and are incessantly cared for, and all of us here are proud that our country gave this hospital to Russia. The contrast between things here and things in Notting Dale cuts deep. Of all the duties laid on England by the war this is not the least 1 that we should look after small children in places so dismal and so hard for them as Notting Dale; that we should keep them alive, feed them up, doctor them, see them through the war, give them a better chance of growing up strong and happy. We cannot afford now to lose any of thorn. I beg your readers to send subscriptions and donations to Lady Macdonell, 81 Kensington Park Gardens, W.; or to the Treasurer, Mrs. Whittaker, 73 Lansdowne Road, W.—I am, Sir, de.,
[We earnestly hope that the appeal of the distinguished surgeon who signs this letter will not go unanswered. It is war work of a vital kind that this School for Mothers is doing. Remember, No Babies, no Britain.—ED. Spectator.]
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