He mentioned a case of men who were brought to Streatham in luxury coaches from a hostel at 8 o’clock and went off to breakfast at 10 o’clock.
They should have had their breakfast before they left the hostel, but did not because they had lain too long in their beds. (Evening Standard, October 27th, 1944.)
“If this idleness continues,” declared Mr. Robertson, “I say put the young men into the infantry and let the older men have a spell of unemployment.”
Trouble Down on the Farm
When they are slack, lazy or disobedient we can report them to their camp, but what happens? They may get a spell of detention, but while they are away doing their punishment the farms are deprived of their services, indifferent though they may be.
We have also found that punishment does not seem to improve them. As a fact, a spell of detention does not have any salutary effect on them, neither does it seem to have any terrors for them.
And when they return to the farm they are worse than ever. The result is that the farmers will not report them for minor breaches of discipline.
This War
There is probably no more efficient dictatorship than General Chiang Kai-shek’s party.
There are secret police, concentration camps and firing squads for those who dare to speak, write or act out of turn. (Daily Mirror, November 1st, l944.)
A General Tells About the Cause of War
There is a universal hope that after the war the great nations will get together and solve the international problems of trade and currency, and thus eliminate unemployment and poverty. This would remove the main causes of world wars and the need for large fighting forces. (Evening Standard, September 27th, 1944.)
Unemployment and poverty are not solved by trade or currency reorganisation, but the worthy General is certainly getting rather warm on the causes of modern war.
The Press is already speculating on how much Parliament is going to give the heads of the fighting services when the war is won. After the last war a sum of £585,000 was voted by Parliament to be distributed to Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals.
“It seems clear that any sum voted by Parliament must considerably exceed the £585,000 of the last war,” says one London evening paper (Star, September 7th).
Have Your Holidays by Hypnotism, says Doctor.
Tired and jaded war workers can have all the invigorating benefits of a seaside holiday without ever going near a beach. It can all he done at home—by hypnotism.
So, at least, says Dr. Alexander Cannon, of the Isle of Man, former psychiatrist to the L.C.C. mental hospital service.
Dr. Cannon suggests the hypnotism may be based on a wavelength in some way common to the length of the so-called short wave.”
“The tired and worn-out worker in this dreamland of hypnosis,” he says, “can be made to walk along the seashore on a warm, sunny day, with a cool, refreshing breeze, and to feel the magnetic power being drawn in through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet as he leisurely walks until he feels wonderful.”
“Having allowed this dream picture to be implanted in his mind for a period of from twenty to forty minutes,” the doctor adds, “the worker can then be awakened with no recollection of his dreamland tour but with a feeling of energy, power and revitalisation which may last anything from one to four weeks or longer.”
Great “Legal” Victory of the Working Class
Somebody should now get up, as they did in 1940-41, and point out that Southern England is part of the same battlefront as Normandy, and that the toughest part of the war is still to come. If the German threat to send rocket shells does mature, something of the sort will have to be done. I believe the response would be much as it was in 1940—production would increase and so would popular resolution. We should in our hearts all rejoice that in this war we are not “sending our sons” only, but sharing in some small way in their risks. (New Statesman, July 1st, 1944.)
Explosions for all
“The reason given on Thursday for the dismissal recently of 1,000 war workers, 900 of them women, from a factory in the West Riding of Yorkshire was that the country is so overstocked with shells that to get rid of them, firing day and night, would take two years. “Two hundred workers are reported to have been dismissed by another Yorkshire firm, but all the 1,200 are said to have been absorbed by engineering concerns in Bradford and Leeds or given jobs as conductresses on buses in these two cities. About fifty have been permitted to return to their peace-time jobs in the textile trade.”—(Manchester Guardian, November 11th, 1944.)
“Frank statements about the methods of some medical men are made to-day by Dr. Andrew Kefalas, of Sheffield. After pointing out that one reason why many people go to the chemist instead of the doctor is that they cannot afford to pay both, he says this in the British Medical Journal:
There is a more ugly side to this scandal and that is that so many of us neither prescribe nor dispense at all. We simply dope out stock mixtures.Cutting the Cards.For myself, I would, in case of illness, as soon lay out at half-dozen patent preparations, select one of them by cutting a pack of cards, and take my chance on the one which turned up, as swallow some of the ‘mist this’ and ‘mist that’ which are foisted upon the people who chance the doctor instead of the chemist.” (Evening Standard, September 12th, 1944.)
“Britain as a nation is not ready to have victory granted to her,” says Rev. A. M. Hay. of St Paul’s, Braintree, Essex, “and that is why the weather—God’s weather— has been almost persistently against us since D-Day.”
Writing in the church magazine, he says: “If there is any doubt that we are not ready for victory, let us ask ourselves how are the majority of people in onr land preparing to celebrate? With revelling rather than with humble thanksgiving.”
Mr. Hay told the Daily Mirror last night: “It was God’s good weather at Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain that saved us.
“I believe strongly that God uses the weather as an instrument in his moral government,” Mr. Hay added.(Daily Mirror, November 9th, 1944.)