THE EDGE OF A GREAT CHANGE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 5, 1 October 1918, Page 8

THE EDGE OF A GREAT CHANGE

NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —We arc on the edge of a great change, and there is no man or woman in the country who does not feel it. Imperceptibly, more by force of circumstances than our own volition, we lavo drifted out into the mid-stream of an uplift in national reconstruction; we are on our way to the great chasm. We have time to consider whether we shall so shape our craft to pass unharmed or chance the channel and the overloading. Our people now know that there is only one way to personal and national happiness—concentration on some form of work, that it is futile to be idle and bestial to maintain* oneself ,ipon another's work. The business man, mewed up, clammed, clogged, and rooted in his ledgers, sees now that his eyes cannot remain upon the movement of shipping. They must rest upon lie stirrings of his fellow-men. The work- ' man, plan he never so wisely for increased wage and lessoned hour, has miraged upon his brain the phantom spectre of his splendid countrymen working, fighting, wounding, and giving up their lives in the mire and hell of a common battleground. That memory cannot escape any of us. It has served, it will serve as an hourly example. The eyes of the whole country are upon national reconstruction. The manipulation of old political ideas and systems ia making an unbecoming and unhappy hotch-potch of affairs. Instead of the dry rot we want to substitute live plans for obsolete obsessions and plant these in the minds of men. We have space only to treat of those with which we are familiar, 'and fortunately they lie close at the root of the disease. The carrying on of public hospitals is becoming more difficult month by month. The extraordinary increase _m cost of buildings, wages, food, calico sheeting, etc., the public demand for '.natcrnity and dental treatment, outpatient departments, free attendance, dispensaries, etc., free of charge all round, make the business unbearable under the local-levy system. Hospitals are now run one-third by the State, one-third by local bodies, and one-third by the public payments, involving waste of time in allocation, waste end impatience in collection. None is a willing payer, with the result that a botched, angular, and unhandsome chidwn is hatched from tho tripartite control. Some boards undertake business not in the proper purview of the Hospitals Act whilst others neglect the eleinentals. Here, plainly, is a case for unison and not division of effort. Follow another closely related set or happenings. The labour unrest. There is the same spectacle. Concessions wrunf from ona body at the expense of another, the vast protoplasmic mass stretching out its tentacles at cue time to obtain a further shilling a week on the plea, say, that sickness cannot properly be provided for. lhat shilling will come, if the wharfingers ask it, from the Harbour Board, it the flaxworkers, from the flaxmillers; if tho coal miners, from either private owners or the State; with the result that hospitals cost more, the coal, fibre mats, ar shipped goods have to be dearer correspondingly. It never seems to strike any of us that if the shilling a week was taken from all of us it would supply hospitals and sick treatment for the whole of us. lhat a shilling taken in an indirect way iroin everyone could insure us not only against sickness, but against unemployment. That, in short, if the hospitals were nationalised through the friend y societies and initiation into these made obligatory for all men and women there would at one stroke bo accomplished what we are all wanting. The whole of the people, rich ana poor, would have to shnije in the business. We should have to remember the words on the lintel of tho house ot the old Eoman merchant: ' Hodie inim, eras tibil" ("To-day it is my turn, tomorrow it may be yours"). The tact of helping in another's illness would go to make us a contented people. Wes don t think we have much sentiment. Weil— we are very shy about these things. There are few things more annoying than to lmvo political economy thrown at one as an argument, but we must follow carefully where it, leads us in this particular direction. As an elementary matter the State must-under-take those things which would be unprofitable for individuals (such as the erection of lighthouses), and those which touch- the very foundations of the country's welfare But many of us have arrived wrongly at the idea that State intervention is always essential to check private enterprise, anil so we have lost our perspective m a general idea-merger of State control. 4s a business contract nothing is worse than State control. It stifles private enterprise in the individual, digs in a large body of pensioned dependants, gathers m towns young people who exist perfunctorily upon a dull routine whom they would be of far.greater use in the country, and is infinitely more costly in management. The State railways ■ and Post Office have cost a fresh borrowed million of pourrls each year to run. The great fundamental fact has been lost sight of that a nation depends upon the thrift of its people, and the health of its new generation. llio simple truth is that preventive medicine can save us from-disease just as national insurance can sustain us ; >m disease and in the lean times comma soon. Let that get fixed in the minds of the people. ' Thousands of people are doing ]obs they hate, and .jobs they are unsmted for. There is no need for that. Let us get in to this matter. Life is an. intelligent compromise with stupidities, and the successful men are those who combine the least foolish of them into one paying enterprise. If they are great men ot fine character so much the greater for tho country. The whole of life is compromise and waiting; so that it is no good one set of men thinking their plan is the only plan. It is useless for one section to get hot, and insist upon wringing concessions from a temporarily weaker body. That is a vile, cowardly, and unmanly business. There are men everywhere in all walks of life who will never concede anything. They are the men we want to find—and leave alone in an environmet of their own making, while the decent world goes on.

But while it is true that there is to be a stupendous change, let us be quite clear that it is not going to be a revolutionary one, You cannot raiso a revolution when each mam in the country insists upon listening with_ critical interest to everything that is said. There is not a man left in the country who does not feel capable of leadii:p: n political party to victory—until ,the next man makes another proposition, and it becomes necessary to wait and see the effect, of it. Nevertheless, them are large matters which treated wisely will effect a proper compromise between these plots and plans, ami induce tho right atmosphere for their solution.

The rock basis upon which all countries, and especially young ones, exist, and the sand basis upon..which they decline are health and disease. Given a people with good health and a proper freedom from acquiring disease, the next important factors are education, to adolescence, security of employment, obligatory thrift, and a pension for old age. The majority cannot or will not make this provision voluntarily, on a level standard. It is our business, to work out in our own minds national insurances on all these

matters, and so make ourselves, by compromise and intelligent self-control, a contented people. Nothing is more futile than to leave these matters to tho genius of the politicians in this country. They are much too busy. "Ve want no distinctions in classes where health is concerned except those based oil intelligence. Wer.eed no dependence upon each other further than that derived from tho mutual selfrespect of a real good will, friendship, and a common aim. For these great aims great stops are necessary:—

National insurance, to provide for sickness.

National hospitals, to ;*ent that sickness. National public health, to prevent it as far as possible. National nursing service. National dental service. National medical service; These steps, which will come as sure as there is. a sun above within two years if worked by people who know their business, will automatically result in certain employment and adequate pensions for every man and woman in the country. People win say these things are impossible should be reminded thnt a greater country when it was nearly starved by submarines said that the convoy system was impossible for ships through submarined waters. It is row adopted. It has beaten the menace of those under the water who sought the country's ruin.

The methods employed now to deal with vital factors like maternity, venereal disease, dental treatment, doctors, and dentists, and publio hospitals is producing a hotch-potch, bastard, State-local-body-service, and will end py submerging the vessel. The method is to work up political agitation against one section in order to start a semiState business in opposition. It is a damnable doctrine, and a gigantic stupidity. It leaves a backwash among large, influential, and essential bodies of people which must eventually swamp the enterprise, cause .avoidable ifrictioDr, and load the politicians with a very proper confusion. Leaving the country with some more white elephants.

• State hospitals, State doctors, State dentists are essentials. Why antagonise them? Educated men dealing with livo fighting pathogenic organisms cannot fall below a certain standard of efficiency; unlike other civil servants who deal with dry, uninteresting routine. Organisation will but help to co-ordinate the work. Those of them who wish will always work in a free market. There is. no difficulty—the thing lies at the door.

These are no plans for universal brotherhood, or any other clap-trap remedies. They are ideas carefully by quiet men for a 'country iMiich has hitherto been in the shameful habitof giving borrowed money to. the working classes in an easy time to have an easy time. In the fear times that are nearly here organised thrift is an essential; ai?,d nationalisation on the lines laid down is the corner stone of the new building.—l am, etc., (DR.) EDGAR WHITAKER. Falmerston North.