VOCAL TRERAPY.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Last year you were good enough to insert an appeal from me on behalf of Vocal Therapy for shell-shocked patients. It is now six years since the War ended, but our hospitals still continue to receive these unhappy men ; though where Vocal Therapy has had a chance of trying its methods we can truthfully claim that the relief obtained has been quite merprisingly. great. In many eases, indeed, it has been more
than relief, it has effected a cure. Such was the case of a Lancashire mill hand who, in his delight at being restored to the company of his fellow-men, exclaimed : " I lost ma' leg and ma' voice, but now t' voice is come back t' leg doesn't matter." And the soldier who declared that " the work done in the music room has made me a different man with a different outlook on life " was spokesman for a whole group of comrades.
Unfortunately, Vocal Therapy, with its curative teaching of deep breathing and singing, linked up with many a handicraft, like other cures, has its price. The response made last year by the readers of the Spectator, the most generous audience of the most generous Empire, enabled us to keep afloat until now, but unless we can again obtain some help, our Committee see the hour once more approaching when we shall have to close down—and it is sad to dose down on hope aroused. My impression is that if your readers, Sir, could see as I saw, first, the neurasthenia ward with its hopeless, helpless inmates, and could then peep into the little Recreation Hut recently presented to a big hospital, and hear these same men, after treatment by Vocal Therapy, gaily playing their favourite " guessing games," capping verses, from Shakespeare to nursery rhymes, or discussing topics ranging from the Labour Government to bird life ; if only, as I say, your readers could look " on this picture and on that," we might budget for a whole year ahead with perfect confidence. It is in this hope that, I venture to approach you anew and to remind your readers that any donation, however small, addressed to Lady Burghclere, 30 Green Street,, Park Lane, W. 1, or to the Secretary, Vocal Therapy Society, 27 Grosvenor Place, S.W. 1, will be gratefully and promptly acknowledged.
—I am, Sir, &c., WINIFRED BURGHCLERE. P.S.—The Secretary will be charmed to send our report to any subscriber. It is the kind of propaganda that speaks for itself.
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