NOTES AND COMMENTS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 270, 13 August 1942, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

An Auckland magistrate, Mr. Luxford, has raised an important question in reference to the admission of girl delinquents to receiving homes under the Child Welfare Act. It is obviously undesirable that girls of this class, who, as Mr. Luxford points out, have contracted loose moral habits, should be allowed to mingle with inmates who are not necessarily delinquents, but in many cases the victims of unfortunate home conditions committed to the receiving institutions as a means of providing them with a healthier environment and better upbringing. It is to be hoped that this hint to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education to take the matter up without delay will be acted upon. It should not be allowed to drift.

It is indicative of the importance which the United States places on , the war in the Pacific that the entire American Press gave the Allied attack in the Solomons precedence over operations in any other zone. That reflects most clearly the interests of the American people. Japanese .strategy in the Pacific lias been the subject of careful study by experts in the United States, and they stress the importance, and the use made by the enemy, of small islands scattered over an immense area. Ihe Japanese have at once developed aerodromes on these islands and. as one American strategist has put it, have used them as stationary aircraftcarriers. The Allied attack on the Marshall group supplied evidence of this and it has been reported that the aircraft, using aerodromes constructed in the Solomons, "are putting up a strong fight against the Allied naval and air forces.” These advanced air bases form the outer edge of the screen which the Japanese have sought, to create. It includes the Marshalls, the Carolines, the Ladrone and the Pelcw groups before the Philippines are reached. Success in the Solomons would break the southern tip off the screen.

The ideal of more honour for motherhood, as presented by the Dominion president of the Plunket Society (Mrs. Janies Begg) for incorporation among national war aims, is of the highest social and racial importance. As Mrs. Begg has pointed out, the most practical approach to it is by the removal or amelioration of abnormal difficulties which confront young parents. Formidable among these is the difficulty of obtaining household help at moderate cost—a problem accentuated, though by no means caused, by war conditions. Back of domestic assistance is undoubtedly a factor operating against the expansion of this country’s birth-rate. It accounts in part, also, for the tendency on the part of young married people to prefer flat or apartment-house life which, in the majority of cases, is so restricted that family responsibilities, far from being looked upon as an honour, are apt to be regarded as a nuisance. Mrs. Begg has also spoken wisely in saying that the problem confronting the modern young motbei is not. wholly financial. L'p to a point, material handicaps exist to be overcome, and in grappling with them young people acquire the fibre and responsibility of good citizenship. Certain psychological handicaps, however, are without compensation and are therefore wholly undesirable. One of these is referred to by Mrs. Begg as the popular “attitude of pity to young mothers with little children”—the viewpoint that motherhood is a tribulation to be bravely borne, rather than a pinnacle of social achievement. It is this fundamental fault which could with great advantage be eradicated in preparation for a post-war era of national advancement.