DICTATORSHIP AND SOCIAL REFORM . [To the Editor of THE
SPECTATOR.] would like to suggest, what has often been urged before, that statistics give an inadequate picture of national health. Few people who have any knowledge of Germany and the Scandinavian countries can doubt the inferiority of the average Englishman's physique. Indeed a realisation of this inferiority, which has long prevailed abroad, is slowly becom- ing general in England. I am not competent to decide whether natural selection during the IVar and post-War years served to invigorate the German stock, but if this was the case, then we in England may expect a magnificent generation to result from the under-nourishment from which half our population is suffering today, and our finest manhood will no doubt come from the distressed areas.
The most significant thing about England is. not that we have inefficient institutions, but that our efficient institutions do not produce the expected results. I gladly believe that the British Public Health Service is the. first in the world, but it does not produce a virile nation—any more than our excellent schools give us an educated one, our churches one that is aware of spiritual values, or than our B.B.C., despite its lectures, concerts and news service, has been able to arrest a steady decline in the cultural level of the people and the reporting standards of the Press. This failure of good instru- ments to do good work is very significant, but it does at least suggest that a mere improvement in the efficiency of our administration, which might conceivably follow from the adoption of Fascism, would not necessarily benefit the nation. The roots of our trouble lie deeper.-- -Yours faithfully, 85 Canterbury Avenue, Ilford. LIONEL H. TRIPP.
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