War and Health (1942)

From the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the beginning of the present conflagration we have been assured by numerous authorities that the nation’s good health has been maintained “beyond all expectations.” Wireless and press, doctors and politicians, have all remarked on this rare and peculiar phenomenon. We also wondered. We thought of Sir John Orr’s statement on pre-war conditions, “that one-third of the nation are not receiving enough food to maintain them in a reasonable standard of health and efficiency.” We thought of the health of the unemployed.

There is no doubt that many workers are better off now, despite food rationing, than they were on their labour exchamge diet. Making bombs and shells requires more fodder than merely sitting on a park bench. We reasoned, though, that a slightly higher intake of food into the workers’ stomachs would be more than offset by the strain and slogging of war production. And then we learned all about the newly discovered virtues of carrots and potatoes, of dried eggs and dehydrated meat; and during the “blitz” we were told of the invigorating effect of a two hours’ sleep. . . . But at last it comes out. An increase in diphtheria, whooping cough, measles and chicken-pox is now reported; there are cases of smallpox in the North; a disturbing rise in tuberculosis, particularly among children, and a rapid growth in the case rate of venereal disease.

Nevertheless we still hear that “the stubborn good health of our people is maintained. We have, thus far. avoided serious epidemics.” Of course, much depends on what our medical experts care to define as a “serious epidemic.” We are inclined to think that the scope of infection will have to be high indeed before any disease conditions are thus described. After all, we must not be too faddy in war time!

However, we are afraid that the health of the workers will surely and quickly deteriorate despite frantic appeals to eat carrots and be inoculated. There is no device known to the doctors that can prevail against the effects of overwork and underfeeding, and the anxieties inseparable from total war. One can appreciate that the health situation is not so pleasant if the chief medical officer is obliged to entertain us over the air with a fireside chat on consumption and syphilis.

It may well be that the number of people killed on the battlefields and through air-raids will be surpassed by the millions destroyed by sickness. The great influenza epidemic that followed the last war is stated to have been responsible for more deaths than were sustained in four years of fighting.

The prospect for the workers to-day is not very hopeful. Many of them are working long hours in badly ventilated factories, are not eating enough nourishing food, and have to live in the vitiated atmosphere of blacked-out rooms. In these circumstances, it is hardly possible that they will be in a fit and proper condition to enjoy the pleasures of the new world order faithfully promised to them by President Roosevelt and Mr. Winston Churchill. Freedom from good health is more likely to be the reward of capitalism’s wage-slaves than freedom from want.

When Mr. Churchill recently addressed the miners’ representatives it was said that he laid before them the “true facts,” and fully explained “the gravity of the situation.” We feel, somehow, that a good discourse on the merits of steak and onions would have been much more to the miners’ taste.

We hold the view that whatever the military outcome of the war may be, its various effects will influence the lives and health of our class. It is quite certain that the workers in the defeated countries will suffer as much as the workers in the victorious countries; they will have the same share of consumption and lunacy, ulcerated stomachs and venereal disease.

Kaye.