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Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16410, 2 January 1919, Page 6

Reports differ as to tho extent to which British women electors voted in the recent contest, but it is quite probable, as the London correspondent of a Sydney paper said, that most of them were more concerned with the return of their husbands from the front, their own industrial future, and tho influenza epidemic than with voting. One woman candidate for a London seat is reported to have confessed that it was a more difficult business to get votes from women than for women.

It was stated in a recent cable that the defeat of Mr Asquith caused great surprise. But there were certainly indications which might well have prepared the public for what took place. According to the correspondent quoted above, Mr Asquith on the Thursday before polling day (Saturday, the 4tli inst.) travelled a hundred miles through his constituency of East Fife "and addressed seven meetings at which he was severely heckled." Considering that he had enjoyed the confidence of the constituency for thirtytwo years, having been returned for it at every election since 1886, that was an omen of defeat which should have been read aright.

A few weeks ago the Public Health Department was being criticised strongly for its attitude in regard to the influenza epidemic, and especially as to its neglect to take such precautions against its gaining a footing in New Zealand, as have proved so successful in. Australia. It appears that about the same time the British Government were being assailed in much stronger language for its "culpable negligence" in failing to create a Ministry of Health that could deal with such a situation as was created by the epidemic. "Little though we know of the influenza," said the London "Times," "we might have palliated the

ravages. We had warning from Spaiii, and a still more urgent warning within our own shores during the past summer. It should have been seen that tho worst probably, was to come. But no warnings were issued, no watch, was kept, and no adequate steps were taken." The result of the lack of a central authority at Home, though the Local Government Board seems to have done as much as lay within its powers, appears to have been that every local body was a law unto itself in dealing with the epidemic. Thus the London County Council, on the advice of its Chiof Medical Officer, kept the elemontary schools open, on the ground that children were no more likoly to be infected in well-ventilated schools than in "running about tho streets, or packed together in picture theatres." In some London boroughs, however, the I schools were closed, and all children under 14 were forbidden to enter a picture theatre. In London itself no such embargo was plrjced on the children. The advico given to tho public by medical writers in the newspapers was on much, the same lines as that offered to New Zealand peoplo by our Public Health Department. The value of fresh air and sunshine was greatly insisted upon, but the advico was somewhat discounted bv the incomprehensible fact that policemen and omnibus-drivers were attacked in great numbors, whilo workers on tho underground railways, who hardly ever saw the sun, escaped almost wholly. Doctors and nurses were terribly over-worked, as with us. At tho London Hospital on one day eighty nurses were on the sick list. It is interesting to note that there was general approval of inoculation with a vaccine as a protection against the severer form of the epidemic. , ♦ Tho demand in Britain for the repatriation of all Germans in tho country has possibly been strengthened by the painful details published from time to time of the treatment and condition jf British prisoners in Germany, and by the sight of those men who have already returned from enemy prisoncamps. Starved and half-clad, and in jtiany instances suffering from brutal handling by their guards, they must prosent a striking contrast with the well-fed and well-clothed German prisoners in England. Of these probably the most comfortable have been tho 22,000 employed on farms. The great majority have been living in camps under guard, ancj tho lenient way in which they have been treated is thus described by a recent writer who saw tho system at work in Cheshire:— "Twenty-sis guards take 200 prisoners from the camp for distribution among 96 farmers within a distance of three miles. As a mail carrier drops his letters, tho guards drop a prisoner hero and there, maybo 2, 3, or 4 at the next farm, land so on until all of tibia prisoners are disposed of. If there are more than 3 prisoners, left at one farm, a guard remains with them. In the evening the guards return and collect the prisoners." In consequence of violent protests from women land workers, orders were given that German prisoners were not to bo allowed to work on farms which employed women. But except in a few cases the prisoners behaved themselves. They certainly had every inducement to do so. They will find life less comfortable when they get back to Germany.