TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 110, 12 May 1930, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY

In the celebration of National Hospital Day yesterday attention was drawn to the great extension of hospital service. Probably few understand how greatly this service has extended—both in the proportion of the community who aro benefited and in 'the measure of that benefit. It is essential that there should be a more widespread public appreciation of the position. The hospital, instituted mainly for the poor, now serves all sections of the community, More and more, as the advance of medical science demands greater specialisation, the people who formerly sought private treatment must resort to.the public institution. It cannot be said that policy has kept pace With this movement. Public hospitals do not make adequate provision for those who have been accustomed in the past to go elsewhere. Yet these axe the people upon whom a large share of the cost falls. They are taxed and rated to provide better service for others, and reform is hindered by misleading protests against "class distinctions." It is time, that the public understood how anomalous the position has become. The "class distinctions" which are the subject of ; protests are not so unfair as the present system which places a heavy burden upon a class which may not share in the benefits. -

Various educational bodies are holding their annual conferences this week. Thesb meetings present an opportunity for rallying public opinion in support of sound reform ;. but in order to use that opportunity fully the conference delegates must place themselves In the position of the public. Hitherto progress has not been so marked as it might have been because the various organisations have clung too tenaciously to their own ideas, refusing to come to an agreement with each other. In a more accommodating spirit, they might have attained a greater measure of agreement in favour of the most urgent reforms. As it is, their differences have left the public somewhat confused, and an excuse, if not* a reason, has been afforded for delay. There are now certain' points of education policy which should be settled at once. The form of postprimary education calls for decision immediately, as upon that decision depends the policy to be pursued in primary school accommodation and organisation. Our present secondary system is admittedly wasteful and duplicated. If all the educational organisations concentrated their attention upon a settlement of this point, there would be marked progress, but progress will be hindered if all bodies present separate ambitious programmes which cannot be carried out for years.

An exchange of views in England concerning the morals of chorus girls may be regarded there as . a matter of pertinence—or, as the girls would say, of impertinence, which amounts sometimes to the same thing—but out here the whole perspective has been altered. The moral condition of chorus girls js receding into the background because the girls themselves are; in fact, they may even become as rare as the huia. And, quite apart from morals, many people miss them. That inexorable sentence upon even the musical comedy company, recorded by Mr. John Fuller, has aroused mixed feelings. A3 to vaudeville, the statements of Sir Benjamin and Mr. John' Fuller show that the firm most associated with vaudeville has almost finished with it. Signs of decay ihcjluded the calling out of the Old Guard—-the Veterans of Vaudeville, among whom were many old friends —but even that did not stem a, tide that threatens to carry an ancient profession to its St. Helena. Mr. John Fuller seems to be quite confident that the film bodies of ballet girls

and the film voices of chorus girls, recorded oversea from high quality originals and cheaply reproduced, will put "flesh-and-blood" ballets and choruses off tour; that even the "bald-heads," amusingly featured in "Gold Diggers," will be converted I—or1—or buried. Meanwhile, to hear chorus girls . being "discussed" in England is like times that are gone. One does not ask: "Where are the morals?" (Perhaps one never did.) But rather pathetically it may be asked where are the girls—"Where are the girls of yester-year?"

All readers of English school stories know about "fagging," but no New Zealanders, fortunately, have experience of it. It is an English public school custom which has, very wisely, not been adopted here. Not that it is so dreadful as one might surmise from the suicide of a Sedburgh schoolboy; but it has degrading possibilities. Service, which it is supposed to teach, may easily become servitude. Where it is well controlled it may help in training small boys in habits of obedience and cleanliness; but this training can Be given in other ways. In our own boys' boarding schools certain service is required. ~ Boys are taught to attend to their own affairs—to be tidy and careful of their own belongings. They must also take their turn in carrying out various general duties; but all save the prefects are called upon to give the same service. The little communities are democracies, with all free and equal, and the leadership (though not based on democratic election) is taken by seniors who have proved themselves worthy of the trust. In England tradition causes the fagging practice to be retained, but here we have not the tradition, and judgment has given us a system more suited to our environment and ideas.

When Mr. Henry Hayward speaks of the "scrapping".of "our present screens"'and the substitution in "our largest New Zealand theatres" of newer and more wonderful cinemachinery "within a year," he seems to be picturing a march of science; but for many people, one would ,i think, the scientific meaning will not be so pointed as the economic. Even as things are, the talking picture for many theatres—apart from those theatres whose big runs have created an obsolescence fund big enough to write off the books their sound plant' investment—is a real problem. Competition (amounting in cases to a prospect of complete loss of business as a silent theatre) compelled some exhibitors to incur a high capital cost before they were certain that the increased revenue of talking pictures would be sufficient to give a return on their higher overhead, plus higher, prices paid by them for the new crowd-compelling films. Even to Iday many exhibitors are not free from anxiety. Will they feel any easier at the prospect of a scrapping of machinery, . and replacement, "within a year"? No doubt the economic, problems attaching to changes in technical equipment and to possible changes in public taste are primarily the concern of the private business interests directly affected. But anything that .'touches the future of tne film industry, causing a possible redistribution of theatre influence, touches the whole public. Public taste is being permeated by film models more than ever by the theatre, and the new wine is flowing mostly into the weaker vessels. We do not know whether Mr. Hayward's prediction is technically sound: But it certainly challenges thought.