Desolation

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 17

Desolation

“The poverty of many of the Tynesiders is not of one kind only,” writes Rhoda Hill'd in “Life and Letters.” “Unemployment pay provides shelter and food. Some manage to squeeze a glass of beer out of it and some get into the cinema to have their dope from Hollywood. Except the Irish most of them have no religion. “Save for the efforts made by the National Council of Social Service and others of goodwill, there is nothing for common enjoyment, nothing to please the people with an elegance beyond their daily life. Perhaps there is only birth and death and love to give them hints of the strangeness and beauty of life. And those must happen in ,the dark, overcrowded dwelling. > “The children may escape and find a wider horizon. Decent housing may happen even there. But who or what can give these people the vision, the spiritual energy to rise from their stagnation? Who will make grass grow on those small sterile places? And will they rejoice that the grass grows? "What of the people who must meantime live there and spend their idle time between the squalor of

their homes and the grim street or sour open space? Perhaps in some future years, the genius of the English for colonisation may find expression in ‘settling’ that particular derelict or empty space. Human life is short; but let us hope that some of those who are now dragging out existence may still be sufficiently alive to perceive the change.”