CHEAP ADVICE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 45, Issue 13795, 27 March 1919, Page 4

CHEAP ADVICE.

It is re-ally wonderful the amount of cheap advice that is being offered beforo tho Influenza Commission which is just now engaged in taking evidence throughout the country. It is also wonderful that this advice- should now bo offerod by officials. We lutve yet to learn that they proclaimed the same udvico from tho housetops before the epidemic. The scourge which passed over New Zealand last November and December showed many of these selfname officials up in anything but a creditable light. They proved themselves to bo both arrogant and ignorant, yet they are handing out much cheap advice as to what should be done iiisido the homo and outside in the case of an. outbreak of plague. On the other hand, another section of officials is, no doubt, .sincere enough, but they assume too much and put on an air of superiority which only causes the public to viow thorn with amusement. Before the Influenza Commission in the South Island tho other day one witness said that "in tho majority of cases, housewives were helpless and frightened, and showod appalling ignorance of the ordinary rules of health and cleanliness." .The epidemic showed pretty conclusively that many housewives knew more about what should bo done than officialdom, and as for housewives being helpless and frightened, tho same statement could bo applied in many instances to officialdom. The public will, no doubt, treat these "superior persons" who are now handing out cheap advice before the Influenza Commission with the con-

tempt they deserve. The real worker — the official who used common senso and went about his or her work during tho epidemic because it was a duty they owed to , , humanity—does not come forward into the limelight, accusing people of this, or advising people to do that. This class of individual—official or nonofiieial—largely predominated in New Zealand during the black months of November and December, and that is why the plaguo was not more virulent than it was.