She (f SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1937. national health MOVEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 22805, 13 November 1937, Page 14

She (f SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1937. national health MOVEMENT.

Britain has a reputation for “ muddling through ” its troubles. When organisation is the order of tho day, however, it is surprising with what thoroughness that can - be achieved in Britain. An example is afforded by the “ National Campaign to Encourage the Wider Use of the Health Services,” now in full career. On the last day of September the Prime Minister, Mr Neville Chamberlain, opened the campaign, at the largest gathering of members of local authorities ever assembled. Each month, for a period of six months, had a separate field assigned" to it. October was to bo devoted to a general introduction, November and December to maternity and child welfare services, including ante-natal clinics, January to the school mental and dental services and to milk in schools, February to tuberculosis and venereal diseases, March to physical exercise and recreation. The Government, the Central Council for Health Education, the new National Advisory Council for physical Training, and local authorities throughout -the country are , all co-operating in this programme, which is meant to impress on every member of the community the importance of national schemes for improving health; ‘ Health services are already established on a scale that leaves small need for addition to their number, and the youngest of them are older than most people would imagine. The aggregate effect of "them has been as a shock now to be reminded that as late as 1866 there was an epidemic of cholera in England, in which 14,000 people died. To-day, owing mainly to improved water supplies, cholera is unknown. In the last fifty years the general death rate has been reduced from 18.7 to 9.2 per 1,000, the infant .mortality rate from 138 to 59, and the mortality rate from tuberculosis from 2,4-50 to 657 per million. Tho greatest limit to the value of most health services is imposed by the indifference of those whom they are designed to benefit. For example, the school medical service has been working now since 1907. The teeth and the eyes of children have been found to be the chief organs requiring attention. There are 2,000 school clinics (including more than 1,300 dental clinics and nearly 700 for defects of eyo or vision), and 1,400 school doctors, 850 school dentists, and 5,000 school nurses. Yet even to-day, it was recalled by Sir George Newman, not much more than half the children requiring dental or oculists’ treatment actually receive it, because, after advice has been given, either children or parents are too unconcerned to take care that it is followed. Before 1906 many children went to school hungry, and the local authorities were empowered by Parliament to provide, when necessary, school, meals, in order to supplement the meals the child received at home. This arrangement was appreciated, with the result that more and more children were fed at school (as well as being better fed at borne), and in 1935-6 no fewer than 87 million meals (including 63 million milk meals) were supplied at school. But free milk, and milk supplied at half the market price, are much too often despised. More than half the children who could buy milk daily at a halfpenny for onethird of a pint fail to do so, and it is not in the poorest districts that the proportion is highest. Education, which will have its place in the course of this National Health Campaign, is required. It is noticed, however, that parents who have benefited by school health services are more solicitous than their parents were that those shall be enjoyed by their children, causing hopes that a time will come when much less education in values will suffice. Long ago George Eliot said that “ important as it is to. organise the industry of the world, it is of greater importance to organise the leisure time of the world.” It is that thought which underlies the movement for increasing recreation grounds and facilities for games and physical exercises throughout the country. ' Last year the Ministry of Health sanctioned loans for recreation grounds to tho amount of £3,190,000, while the annual expenditure of local councils on open spaces, including maintenance and loan repayments, has been officially computed to bo in the neighbourhood of £5,500,000.

MYSTERIOUS RUSSIA. Spying and wrecking in Russia appear to have reached the dimensions of an epidemic. The purge continues with unrelenting fury. To-day it is reported that 400 Germans in Russia, who were supposed to be in opposition to the present regime in Germany, have been placed under arrest. The usual confessions of guilt are said to have been readily forthcoming. Other arrests include those of persons who have taken a prominent part in the activities of the State. Among them, it will lie noted, is the deputy Poet Laureate, who has distinguished himself in the past by the production of verses extolling the Soviet method of suppressing traitors. Lenin was ruthless, once tho revolution was launched, in dealing with those who were faithful to the Tsarist rule. His acts were guided by fanatical devotion to a fixed ideal, and his methods can at least be. understood. That does not apply in the case of Stalin. Tsarism as a political force has gone, and so to a large extent have the old revolutionary tenets propounded by Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin is declared to be a mere opportunist, determined to maintain his present position, and dominated by fear, a potent emotion that down the ages has led to tho most violent repressive measures. The Russian purge takes two forms. One is directed against persons who are tlcclared to be wreckers of the Soviet’s internal economy; the other involves individuals suspected of spying and plotting in the interests of outside Powers. In this connection Germany, Poland, and Japan are freely mentioned. The list of executions in the last three months is much greater than can be understood by a cursory reading of tho cable messages from time to time. In August it was reported that the grain supply director and other important officers of his department received tho death sentence. This news was followed by the conviction of nine men on charges of infesting grain warehouses with pests, of ten officials at the Leningrad power station, of members of the foreign intelligence service in Siberia, and of ten high army officers who were accused of working in the interests of Trotsky. There is no- distinction of class in the ruthless methods that are employed. High and low face the firing squad. One of those suffering the extreme penalty was a woman bottle washer on the railways who was accused of putting sulphuric acid into the water bottles on a train. . Three cooks were sentenced to death for attempting to poison restaurant customers with foul meat, their action being attributed to malice against the Government. Two women employees of a children’s homo were shot for introducing poisonous matter into the food of children with counter-revolutionary aims. These are only fragments from a blood-stained tale. If the charges on which tho innumerable executions have been based are true it would appear that Russia is honeycombed with intrigue and disaffection. Stalin is an Eastern in temperament and outlook, and his policy seems to be to crush without mercy all anti-Stalin elements. With things as they are to-day in Russia it could hardly be expected that any other Power would place great reliance in the Soviet as an ally.