IN ONE of his most felicitous sentences Mr Lloyd George said that it is impossible to run an A1 Empire on a C3 population. Addressing a medical audience on Tuesday, the Minister of Reconstruction, Dr Addison, adapted the epigram to the purpose of his address, putting it in this form: “You cannot get an Al population out of C3 homes.” In whatever way we may express it, the moral is the same: as soon as we take in hand the task of reconstruction, one of the first things will be to look to health and sanitation. We cannot preach the doctrine of a sound mind in a sound body without its corollary, a healthy body in a healthy house. Neither can we plead helplessness in this matter, for the experience of the war has shown what can be and has been done by medical science and skill for the preservation of the soldiers’ health under the most unfavourable conditions of living. When these men come home again, it will be intolerable to expose them to all the dangers and discomforts of the insanitary state of things prevailing here when they went to the Front. And there is the new generation to be thought of, the generation that is to take the place of those hundreds of thousands of men who will not return. Under an energetic Minister of Education we hope to see that generation better instructed than any in the past, but his efforts will need to be seconded by a Ministry of Health, whose duty it will be to co-ordinate all the existing agencies, so that the physical well-being of the children shall be even better cared for than at present.

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