Rural Housing. By W. G. Savage, M.D. (T. Fisher Unwin.
7s. 66. net.)—There is an impressive honesty throughout this work of the Medical Officer of Health for Somerset, who evidently has a refreshingly clear head. He distributes praise and blame with admirable fairness to landlords and tenants, to public authorities and their officers alike. His book is a clear statement of the case at the beginning of the war, written in plain but singularly ungraceful English. • He has only one fad with which we cannot entirely sympathize : he objects to any cottage bedrooms communicating. His objection is valid in the cases of many families, but where there are several small children the tendency to keep them sleeping in the parents' room is less if they can use a communicating room, which becomes desirable. It is satisfactory to find in Dr. Savage an official who can condemn wasteful administration by public bodies, and has good words to say of the voluntary efforts of landowners and Co-operative Societies. His experience of District Councils leads him to wish that some of their powers under the Housing Act (1909) might be transferred to the County Councils. If they were, perhaps he would find that one public authority is more like another than he thinks. The tables and photographs which add to the value of the book arc mainly taken from Somerset, which the author knows so well, but he has plenty of useful information about other parts of Great Br: 'n m.
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