Hospitals and State Aid Is rejection of the principle of
State aid to be made a sacred article of faith among all members of the managing committees of voluntary hospitals ? At a Queen Mary's Hospital appeal dinner Sir Eustacc Fiennes was rash enough to express the surely not very revolutionary view that hospitals ought to be State-aided. The immediate sequel of this utterance was a repudiation of his view by the committee of management and his own resignation from that body. Why should such an opinion be denounced as heresy ? Many subscribers to voluntary hospitals are rendered profoundly uneasy by the desperate resorts to which they are driven in order to make both ends meet, and would make their contribu- tions with far more assurance if they knew the hospitals had some backing in the form of a State grant. Oxford and Cambridge did hot lose their independence by accepting State aid, and there is no reason to suppose that the great voluntary hospitals would do so. If it is not State aid, but State control, which is feared, nothing is so likely to lead to it as the year-in, year-out adver- tisement of their financial embarrassment.
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