A GREAT DISILLUSION

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 14068, 26 November 1918, Page 5

A GREAT DISILLUSION

THE EPIDEMIC ANALYSED. (By Observer Close Up.) Death is flashing its lightning stroke over the, country, striking full forc« upon those dearest in the homes and leavoing behind it in too many cases the ravage of desolation and most vibrant sadness. The vivid reflex of it 3 blinding light lies heavy still upon us so that even now we look with shaded eyes. Let us examine becomingly some aspects of this great disillusion, for that is what it is. We had imagined ourselves so many miles away it seemed, safe from the dread evil, but once more national isolation has proved impossible. Certain facts have never officially been contradicted, and the history would appear somewhat as follows: The Niagara arrived on 12th October with cases recovering from European, influenza on board. They landed without quarantine in Auckland and stopped in the hotels. Three weeks later, about Tuesday, sth November, several cases had been admitted into the local public hospital in Palmcrston North, and by the Bth fifteen grave cases were in the institution; two doctors were down and several nurses., while two extra surgeons were doing duty. By the 14th, by volunteer effort hastily summoned and readily offered during the evening of the armistice procession, accommodation had been erected for about twenty more beds, and by the 17th another splendid volunteer effort had given another 12 beds. But these had not their full effect, since by now 14 nurses were down with the disease. Three clays later the Empire Hall was taken and smartly fitted up, by the kindness and good work of Colonel Gabites and his men, as a children's creche and hospital, and, two days later still, tho Anzac Club was occupied by 30 cases, men and women, and taken over later completely by the N.Z.M.C. In the meanwhile a small committee consisting of Messrs L. Collinson, Nicholls,, and H. G. Bagnall waited upon those carrying on the frail organisation already existing. They proposed and carried out, with a strong body of able helpers, a house-to-house canvass, upon which the whole system of food and nursing relief, no longer haphazard or hasty, soon came to depend. They found within 24 hours 1580 cases in 320 houses needing urgent relief; they broke the backbone of the disorder, crumpled up the fear of increase and disaster and brought confidence and hope into the homes of people and the minds of men. But, were avc asked to award the greatest distinction to any who helped to stem the tide, we would give the palm unreservedly to the volunteer workers in the homes. These were of the very brave and fine. For while infection is to doctors and trained nurses but a daily business these splendid women, many of them on the threshold of their lives, without experience, armed only with the finest courage, lired, tended, cared for and brought through the worst cases in their worst times as only the best can; one giving the supreme sacrifice of her life. The town should recognise that work in some small personal memorial. There are many deductions to be drawn from this fell scourge. The failure of the Public Health Department was long predicted. Metaphorically, a skeleton with paper legs and granite head, it no sooner felt the pestilent wind than the responsibility, refused contemptuously during the necessary years of preparation, was at once shelved upon the shoulders of the Borough Councils. Pamphlets and directions were showered by the Department upon the devoted people, medicine from the Department arrived on the 20th with the Departmental inhalation machine —at the end of the epidemic. Tho local doctors in council had long supplied the ingredients, and the relief committee had been dispensing a better mixture, better because ready, and the stationmaster, Mr Day, had lent one of his Department's inhalers for more than six days.

That Public Health. Department will not surely survive the influenza. New Zealand cannot be governed by ukase. There was a still greater disillusion. We were' told there was no poverty in New Zealand. That is a lie. There is poverty., wretchedness, filth and degradation in hundreds of houses. There arc scores of houses with two or more complete families living in them under undesirable conditions. Little children are sleeping on sacks, expectoration, vermin and beastliness lies upon the floors, unheeded. The bedding sodden and pestilential. Now. what are we going to do about it? Are we going to allow little girls and boys to sleep on filthy sacks in our town and other towns because their fathers and mothers have so many little girls and boys. Children are not a crime. They are the essential of this country. Mothers are handicapped throughout their lives by having children. Keep that sentence deep in your inmost minds, it is the fundamental matter. The mere temporary treatment of. this matter by a live Mayor and helpers is nothing at all—beyond temporary treatment. It is a direct challenge to our smug lives. It means that we are failing to prevent, under the most favourable conditions and in the loveliest country, the very degradations which have happened under the worst. No legislature can be faced with a graver problem than this. Do we moderate people agree now that those who drink immoderately are brave, strong, surviving citizens? If drink has to do with those little mites lying on sacks we will give prohibition a go. Let no one make any mistake about that. One family in this epidemic cannot have cost less than one hundred pounds, on a modest computation, in five days for removals, upkeep food and renovation. Providence alone knows how many others were infected by it. That is not sense. It implies a neglect of elomcntals. Here is either a bad citizen or a citizen overburdened with too many responsibilities. The remedy is clear enough. The State must take something from every man's wages in this country so that by an ordered thrift, allowing national insurance, national hospitals, national cmploynient and national medical and nursing ser< vices this damning degradation may be wiped out of the country. New Zealand is ripe for these things. To temporise, to: go with the wind, to keep some other person out—that was the old method. Better, finer things, are wanted now.