The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15, 1943. Policies

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24053, 15 September 1943, Page 4

The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15, 1943. Policies

If this General Election has any meaning and value, they are those of the people’s opportunity to choose between policies and their administrators; and Mr Holland has done well to concentrate on making it an opportunity to choose intelligently. His experience in touring the Dominion, he said in an interview,, had proved the course he had taken throughout the campaign to be a sound one, the straightforward course of “ placing his party’s policy “ before the people.” Their response, as he hoped, has shown that political interests are keen and turned to the future, not the past. When Mr Holland spoke in his own electorate on Monday, his reference to the “ five giants,” in Sir William Beveridge’s phrase, unemployment, want, sickness, ignorance, and squalor, exhibited the range of the party’s social and economic attack. His particular references to family assistance, housing, the health of school children, and wider educational opportunity illustrated its method. But the encouragement Mr Holland has received, and deserved, should carry him still further. These plans are bold and constructive, as he claims. Their appeal can only be strengthened by a closer view. The proposal to bring every school child under regular medical examination, for instance, is an excellent one, if—and this is no doubt intended—examination is to accompany a greatly improved system of school health service and physical education and to test and direct its working. x For such a purpose it will be necessary to build up steadily the medical staff of the Health Department’s division of school hygiene, at present grotesquely understaffed; it may be necessary to develop a system of training arid recruitment accordingly; it will certainly be necessary to reorganise school staffing and teacher training to ensure effective co-operation. The electorate will not weary of wide views or of practical details. It can grasp both and wants both. The Labour Party is offering neither. It is fighting this campaign on the theory that it will be safest if it says least about the measures and methods it will pursue, if returned to office. It is not a badly calculated- theory; but it has this great weakness, that there is not much fight in it. It cramps Labour’s platform. ■ And that is the National Party’s opportunity. Mr Holland has no need to be afraid of letting full daylight play on his policy. TJhe nation’s attention has been seized. It can be held and satisfied. >