The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED By New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1930. DRILLING IT IN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19060, 3 May 1930, Page 8

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED By New Zealand Newspapers Ltd.

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1930. DRILLING IT IN.

Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. London Representatives: R. B. BRETT & SON 34, NEW BRIDGE ST., LONDON. E.C.4.

'T'HE GOVERNMENT ought to -T take immediate steps to see that no hardship is inflicted on those students who have been doing a week’s military training in place of night drills, but are now called upon, following the abolition of the annuul camps, to undertake thirty night drills and six half-day parades in the school or college vacation. The Defence Department is probably acting within the letter of the law in making this demand upon students, and perhaps we ought to he glad of its lack of imagination, because it will hasten the abolition of the present system. There has been ample evidence in the past that compulsory military training has interfered seriously with the studies even, of University students, and it is unthinkable that the abolition of the camps upon which these students depended for the discharge of their statutory obligations should make their position worse and not better as far as their education is concerned. Actually the fate of compulsory drill under the present system is already sealed. The abolition of the annual camps was an indication of the opinion of the Government on the subject, and there is no doubt that the views of the Government will be endorsed by Parliament when it is in session. Compulsory registration may still be desirable, and medical examination of all youths could he made of very real value to the nation, but these factors can be retained without continuing the burden of an out-of-date and unnecessary organisation. THAT £250 REWARD. THE COMMISSIONER of Police, who is nothing if not fair in all his dealings with his staff, may find some little embarrassment in allocating the £250 reward given by the Underwriters’ Association in copnection with the arrest of the “ fire-bugs,” who terrorised Christchurch for so many months. He may think that the detectives who secured the confession of the Gray brothers had a part in the conviction, and so they did, but the general public will always feel that the constable who arrested these desperadoes single-handed, at a time when the detective force were completely at a loss for even the slenderest clue, was deserving of the whole reward, even though he was not aware at the time of the arrest that he had “ bagged the firebugs.” It did not require much acumen on the part of the detectives to assume that men taken heavily armed in the act of burglary might very well he the criminals that they turned out to be. COMMUNITY HOSPITALS. LONDON cablegrams in the last 1 day or two have outlined a proposal for the provision of a partially State-supported scheme by which medical services are to be completely co-ordinated in Britain to supply the community with every means for the prevention and cure of disease. This is an almost revolutionary suggestion, coining as it does from the headquarters of the British Medical Association, and it is all the more striking in Britain where the hospitals arc maintained largely by private bequests. The scheme provides that the nation should he classified into groups of those willing and able to pay for all services, and others on scales according to their ability to pay. It will mean that where necessary a free service will be instituted. All this is of interest because it supports the argument of. those of us who have advocated the community hospital in New Zealand. Public hospitals should be open to at! classes, and not to the sick poor only. Under the British arrangement anyone going into hospital would be classified, and the amount lie would pay for medical attention and nursing would be based on this classification. This grading would necessitate private rooms as well as the usual dormitories in the hosnitals. It would also mean that where poor patients received the attention of specialists a fee of some amount would he payable by the hospital and this would, in the long run, have the effect of bringing down the private practitioner’s fees. The present mistaken policy of exclusion that is followed by hospital boards in New Zealand must be amended before long, and this actio' on the part of the British Medical Association is a very definite indication of the direction in which medical opinion is moving in the matter.