BETTER HOUSING, BETTER LIVING

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 137, 6 December 1918, Page 6

BETTER HOUSING, BETTER LIVING

When the devil is sick, the devil a saint would be; and when Wellington, is sick, she bum® -with a fine enthusiasm to re-modiel her domiciliary environment. But—what -will happen, when Wellington, in the fulness of healing time, resumes her collective health? Experience indicates that communities, like individuals, have short memories, and it is much to be feared that a repentant city lias little more continuity of purpose than a penitent devil. Still, this much, lias to be admitted: if there is anything at all to be gained, from a, lesson of experience, the lesson learned in the last couple of months has surely not been taught in vain. The innuenaa visitation has provided the most vivid, demonstration of shortcomings that the city has ever ■witnessed. It lias shown that the excellent civic advances of the last thirty or forty years—including drainage, which diminished typhoid— are still insufficient protection against various forms of infection; and it has proved that no system, of refuse-removal is complete without personal cleanliness and good homing.

If the people of Wellington, and those of New Zealand in general, ha-ve really profited by what they have seen and felt, they will not allow Parliament and the publio bodies to" return to the old nit of laissez faire. They will insist upon a real housing ino-Kcy, and .they will reinforce it with a parallel movement for better home-keeping and cleanlier hafoite. Tho politician who places jirapenty before progress, the landlord who finds profit in slum-owner-ship, and the tenant who specialises in dishonesty and filth—all these will stand in the track of the new movement; but, if tho people have learned their lesson, .the movement will roll over them. If not, then the whole thing will end much Where it began, with merely some addition to the well'known material that paves the road to ohaos. In short, the people of New Zealand. will reap what they deserve—no more and no less.