SIR,—The treatment meted out to the mother of your correspondent,
Mr. Anthony Kiely, is certainly outrageous, but I doubt if this kind of thing applies only to a Socialist Government, as he seems, perhaps unintentionally, to imply. I myself, when Governments of other political persuasion have been in power, have had to hammer vigorously at Government departments to get them to face up to their obligations to poor and unfortunate people when I was a member of a benevolent com- mittee of a certain branch of the British Legion. I am thinking of a woman on whose behalf I wrote to a dilatory Government department (eventually with success) and who had similar, if not as bad, treatment as Mrs. Kiely's mother. The problem of modern society, it seems to me, is to introduce that personal and sympathetic touch, one of whose expressions is reasonable speed in dealing with the unfortunate, into public services becoming increasingly organised and depersonalised. Only the christianising of our administrators can do it. Meanwhile I convey my deepest sympathy to your correspondent and his mother.— Yours, &c., ARTHUR B. MORLEY. 288 High Street, Sheerness, Kent.
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