40 OPENING SESSION 



Canadian Commission of Conservation) : Sir Thomas Bar- 

 low, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Commission 

 of Conservation, including the people of Canada generally, 

 I have to extend their most cordial thanks for the invitation 

 extended to us in Canada to attend this Conference on 

 Infant Mortality, and their greetings as one of the parts 

 of this great Empire. We in Canada have difficulties quite 

 different from those just described. We are taking, as the 

 Right Honourable speaker said this morning, some 82 per 

 cent, of the emigration from this country, and as these 

 people come out to Canada they bring with them many of 

 the thoughts and many of the mistakes which exist in this 

 country and it is extremely hard for us to meet these diffi- 

 culties. However, irrespective of politics, the members of 

 all the Governments are interested in public health. The 

 Commission of Conservation, of which I am Adviser, has 

 been deputed to consider what is best for the conservation 

 of the interests of our Dominion, and the Chairman of 

 that Commission has stated that he considers that the 

 health of the people is of first importance, not only for 

 Canada, but also for the Empire. It is our interest not only 

 to consider the infant, but also the mother and the father. 

 We only trust that whatever resolutions are passed here and 

 whatever decisions are arrived at, we may carry back to 

 Canada good words of counsel and advice which Canada 

 will follow closely. 



Dr. W. PERRIN NORRIS (Chief Medical Officer of the 

 Australian Commonwealth Medical Bureau) : Mr. President, 

 on behalf of my colleague. Dr. Mary Booth, and myself, 

 I desire to express our keen appreciation of the privilege 

 of membership in this Conference and to convey to you 

 greetings from the Commonwealth of Australia and from 

 the organizations there concerned in the subject with which 

 the Conference is to deal. Twenty years hence, when the 

 spade-work of the new practical science of eugenics will 

 have been done and the harvest is ripening, we may have 

 to consider the problem of infant mortality from other 

 standpoints, but to-day we are called upon to seek by every 

 means in our power to staunch this wound in the nation's 

 side and to save all those infant lives not irrevocably doomed 

 or hopelessly blighted from birth. Surely what has already 

 been accomplished here and elsewhere is full of encourage- 

 ment and promise for the future. Wherever there has been 

 properly organized effort the infant mortality has steadily 

 fallen, and in Australia, as in Norway and still more in 

 New Zealand, we have been able to keep the death-rate 

 far below TOO, the rate which till recently was our aim. 



