WRONG TO THE CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 94, 20 April 1916, Page 6

WRONG TO THE CHILDREN

Mr. Baldwin, Chairman of-the Wellington Hospital Boai'd, in another at-' tempt to defend the projected confiscation or "temporary" commandeering of part of the Children's Hospital, displays an amazing persistence and a. wiiful blindness to the point of principle. At this stage of the controversy there is no excuse for ignorance of the history, pi that new Children's Hcepital, but a bare majority of the board has given scant heed to that history. That bare majority, shallowly entrenched on untenable ground, exposed to fire, is worse off than ever a's the result of Mr. Baldwin's sortie to-day. The Chairman ha.s a new gospel of ethics and. civics and public principle generally. * Summarised and analysed, his statement of to-day amounts to this: —The board knew some months ago that accommodation for ophthalmic cases was urgently needed. "The urgency for relief was apparent—it stared you in the face." • says Mr. Baldwin, "and as we considered that it was hardly a. suitable time either to raise a loan or make an appeal to the public (other than for patriotic purposes), we decided to recommend the temporary use of these unoccupied wards, upstairs in .the Children's Hospital—surely under the circumstances not an unreasonable way to meet the difficulty." And hero is the grand finale, of the latter-day "philosophy" :— "The idea of using the empty wards temporarily was purely a matter of expediency, and at times sentiment must give way to expediency." Thus, accord-^ ing to the reasoning of Mr. Baldwin (who is surely not true to himself in this matter) it is more honourable during war-time for a public body to commit a breach of trust against children than to ask the public for money or raise a loan to provide a necessary ward for ophthalmic sufferers.^ Why is it better for the board to disgrace itself by an illegal and inequitable misuse of part of the Children's Hospital than to do its duty in a proper manner? Also it is necessary to remind Mr. Baldwin that this is not a question of "sentiment" but a principle of right. , Too much wrong has been done by public bodies in the namt of "expediency," which tends to usurp the principle of right. '