HOW TO CLEAN OUR SKIES [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.]
Sin,--I hope that many readers of " Crusader's " very in- teresting article will see that, if cleaning our skies is to be the blessing to the world which it ought to be, it must from the first be sought as part of a very much larger reform than cleaning our slides by itself would be. I read with great
regret these words of " Crusader " : " I have just been 'through the Rhineland and seen for myself the contrast with ')ur industrial North, commented on by Lord -Newton and Mr. E. D. Simon (enlightened ex-Lord Mayor of Manchester), in their official report. The Germans make everything our cities make except the smoke—and the rickets."
Unfortunately " Crusader " is quite mistaken in believing that the Germans do not make rickets in their large towns. The death-rate in their large towns is much higher than that in our large towns, an evil in great measure owing to the common housing of the people in tall tenement blocks, many _rooms in which get what air and light they do get from courts ; and owing also to the children failing to get air and exercise in easily accessible streets or open courts. Many years ago
read a statement made by the senior vaccinating doctor of Chenmitz, that all vaccinating doctors would support his assertion that hardly any children are brought to doctors In German large towns for first vaccination who do not show signs of rickets. I read, also, an account written by a German doctor of his first visit to the East End of London. So _''disgusting did he find the dirtiness and disorderliness of the bodies and clothes of many of the people, and the signs of intemperance in both women and men, that he hoped he should never see the place again. But, when he looked for signs of health and disease, he found to his astonishment that the people were much healthier than the much cleaner and more prepossessing inhabitants of Berlin and its suburbs. He attributed the difference to the fact that many of the East-Enders lived in houses of two storeys, the doors of which were constantly -being opened so that the children could easily slip out to play in court or street. It is to. be hoped that we shall not have a crusade to give us clean skies obtained by the substitution of sky-scrapers for houses of two storeys.—
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