“COMPLETELY OUT OF PLACE.”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1942, Page 2

“COMPLETELY OUT OF PLACE.”

its meeting yesterday the Wairarapa Hospital Board had

before it a protest by the New Zealand Educational Institute against the occupation of school buildings for hospital purposes—a protest thoroughly justified and well warranted. One member of the board observed that the protest seemed to be completely out of place. What exactly that was intended to imply is not clear, but a great many people and particularly parents of children of school age may be expected to feel that hospital patients are as completely out of place in a school building as they well could be. On the plea of emergency, the temporary occupation of the Lansdowne School by the Hospital Board has been accepted, but it is the plain duty of the board and of the national health authorities under whom it operates to establish as soon as possible conditions in which it will not be necessary, even in an emergency, to invade the Lansdowne School or any other school. The arrangement under which a hospital annexe has been built in the Lansdowne School grounds, and the school is liable to be taken over by the Hospital Board in any time of emergency, is in itself a thoroughly bad one. It may not be practicable to make an end of this arrangement during the war period, but there should be no question of allowing it to continue indefinitely.