MALNUTRITION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 247, 16 September 1935, Page 6

MALNUTRITION.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—The N.Z. Welfare League returns to the attack twitting me tor using “half a column.” i reckon as long as the other ‘ ‘half-space w as 11 ?. suffering fropi “malnutrition, wet!, whose business welfare is that. Conceding the “touchy point for -tie moment that Labour did, in an exuocrance of spirit for the welfare of the children, lump the various ailments as “malnutrition,” the point remains that the report faces both ways, at once. The Director-General says:— 1 here is no reason to believe that the healt i o the people had in any way been impaired by the economic crisis. vvnat could be more absurd when viewed in its crises setting of relief, cuts, iations, sustenance, clothes and food drives, fireless firesides, etc. 1 ly the report does not square with pi per cent. (2805) of 51,000 school children wlio the Director says aie suffering “malnutrition.” Are these not some of “the pe.ople. or are they so emaciated as to spoil the pictui e. It would bo “a very unlikely supposition” also to suppose this report covers the many thousands of children under six years, who are not yet drafted to school. I challenge the Director-Gen-eral to publish his data on this point. 1 acquiesce that the point under discussion is still wliat the report actually said, but both ways. Ls not the Welfare League’s school kid thought analogous to that of Labour as regards tho political red herring ? Sirs, why labour the inference of the report that “all is well,” when any normal person knows this is not so. The report blandly says in fact .that “the economic crisis” has produced (cheap) good health. Is the Director a devotee of slimming ? Misquoting is a heinous thing like unto this bolstering business now offered to a gullible public. Further, on behalf of the mothers—our bulwark —I challenge you, as well, to publish the executive or the personnel of your pseudonymous league, which has the knack of turning up, say, about election time. Will tlie wimmin win, or your smug complacency?—l remain, etc., ERNEST PETTY. Feilding, Sept. 16, 1935.