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With regard to the cost the memorandum assumes that the health
visitors will be officers of the sanitary authority, so that their salaries
need not be reckoned as a part of the working expenses of the centre,
which would comprise "the doctor's salary, rent, rates, taxes, lighting,
heating, caretaking, and a few minor items, including drugs and medical
appliances." The Local Government Board will pay 50 per cent of
the amount spent on approved expenditure for the above purposes, but
it is thought that in many instances the centre can be conducted on
premises used for other purposes, so that no rent need be paid.
So far, the effect of the war upon the child has received but scant
attention by local authorities. Yet it is a matter of supreme importance
both to us as a nation and to us as a race, that the future of the child
should not be handicapped by the patriotism of the father. We must
not forget that the boys and girls of to-day are the men and women of
to-morrow. Heavy, then, as the national burden is, and must continue
to be, the problem of the child must neither be neglected or set aside.
As far as possible a solution must be found for every case of hardship
or distress, either directly or indirectly, attributable to the operations of
the war. It has never been the practice of the British people to stint
their expenditures, and every family that possesses the means of
spending money freely does not hesitate to provide itself, not only with
all the necessaries it requires, but with as many comforts and luxuries
as it can reasonably afford. The savings of the British people are
made after all these other expenditures are provided for. Hitherto the
British people have financed this great war in the same way as they
would have financed a great Government building, a new county hall,
or a new post office. They have assumed that expenditures for such a
purpose would be met after they had supplied themselves with their
necessaries, comforts and luxuries. This is the situation at the present
time. The nation is spending just as much upon its necessaries,
comforts and luxuries as it usually does. In fact, expenditures upon
these things are greater than they have ever been. Hitherto the entire
cost of the war has been financed out of normal savings and by the
consumption of floating capital. The greatest reserve which the country
possesses is still untouched—the power to reduce its expenditures upon
comforts and luxuries, and by so doing to set free the additional money
needed by the nation for war purposes. Financiers are convinced, however,
that without serious difficulty thecountry can increase the annual sums
it has hitherto devoted out of income to the war by about £
400,000,000 a
year. If this is so, one can readily imagine that the small amount of
money required for maternity and child welfare will also be found.