The Catholic Problem of Evacuation

Extract

I am not attempting to discuss here the wider problems of evacuation taken in its most general sense. The general scheme and its results have come in for much adverse criticism both in the secular press and in our catholic papers. It seems only fair, then, that one should give some of the good effects where one has found them. Of course it is only in the normal order of things that first things come first with Catholics. So we make no apology for the fact that in the case of children evacuated from our catholic schools it is with their religious welfare that we are primarily concerned. Not that we think the material welfare of the child to be unimportant. It is merely considered in its proper place. For convenience I shall, however, take this less important aspect first.

The evacuees came from the danger areas, namely the large industrial cities with their congested conditions of life, and from crowded seaports. Such places are unhealthy not only in war time, and for fear of German bombers. When one thinks, then, of the money that is spent in an ever-increasing amount, year by year, in peace time, in bringing children from the worst of such areas into the healthy surroundings of seaside or countryside; and that the evacuation scheme did this very thing on a wholesale scale—for all children, and not merely for a week or two, but indefinitely—it seems evident from this, the point of view of national health and fitness, that the scheme deserved more support from the public generally.