DEPLORABLE SIGHTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 464, 17 July 1909, Page 3

DEPLORABLE SIGHTS.

Writing on Etnpire Day' the

v ‘Standard of Empire” says:— The visitor from . overseas comes

in the mood to admire .England ; can we honestly believe that we can send him home full of admira-

tion tor the English people ? There are dome things which, if he happens to be in the way of noticing them, must arouse a sentiment of another kind. We may hope that no indiscreetly officious friend takes him down to the Thames Embankment or General Booth’s shelters, there to see hundreds of men hungrily waiting in wet or cold for a basin of soup and a slice of bread-—men able and perhaps willing to work, but for whom no work can be found in wealthy England ! These are our unemployed, selected specimens of those thirteen millions “on the verge of starvation ” to whom Mr Asquith’s predecessor in the Premiership once referred. What thoughts must these deplorable sights evoke in the breasts of those who come from countries where men are not unemployed and do not walk the streets ragged and famishing ; where the eye is not hourly shocked by travesties of humanity ?• If we are to hold our place in the Imperial, system we must, in a very real sense, put bur house in order. Between communities of healthy, prosperous, selt-respect-ing men and women and a population largely steeped in poverty and degradation association must become increasingly difficult. We must adopt the colonial standard of well-being, and by suitable measures of education, physical training, and economic readjustfnent raise our people to it.