What a distance there is between the words ‘works of mercy’ and that irritating slogan of prosperity, ‘We've never had it so good'.

It is the distance between the good Samaritan and the welfare state.

Perhaps it is true that people in England are being better cared for than ever before. It is comfortable to believe that most of the natural tragedies of humanity—sickness, old age, incurable disabilities—come under some heading or other in health services or charitable organizations, and that everyone is taken care of ‘from the cradle to the grave'. We only have to look a very little way under the surface and behind the scenes to know that it is not true.

It is a sad fact that all round us are numbers of men, women and children, chronically sick, or dying slowly of incurable disease, or so severely and permanently disabled that it is not possible for them to live anywhere but in the ‘chronic’ wards of hospitals, where their very beds are often needed for more curable patients.