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far off before we can cope with the beginning of many of the
diseases which affect the children during their school life.
One has to face this fact, particularly at the present time,
that amongst the poorer members of the community, particularly
with the enormous rents they have to pay at the present time,
there is a very direct tendency to avoid expenditure of any kind
which can be regarded by the parent as not absolutely necessary.
Apart from the West Middlesex Mutual Benefit Society in
which the children are insured, and therefore there is no other
expenditure, the only manner in which free treatment can be obtained
is through the Public Assistance Authority. Hospital
treatment is now no longer gratuitous.
It must be borne in mind that expenditure of even small sums,
which many people look upon as trivial, assumes a very different
aspect in importance if the amount is regarded in terms of loaves
of bread that sum will purchase.
One has to face the fact that a number of these children are
the offspring of parents who are living very definitely below the
nutritional line, and the result is that there is recurring illness,
which in all probability would not arise were the nutrition of the
family adequate. As I pointed out elsewhere, these children are
continually short of protein, carbo-hydrate surfeited, bulky and
flabby, and lack the ordinary resistances that the well fed child
possesses.
This age group of 2 to 5 is under these conditions, assuming
a larger and larger importance in the nation's health, and it is
welcome news that the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education
is seeking some solution to the problem of safeguarding these
children, a problem which, in these times of national financial
stress, is going to be handicapped at every turn, but the importance
of the matter to the nation and its uprising generations, cannot
be gainsaid.