Calm After Floods
The danger that, after flood and tempest, the miseries of a Political storm might be-inflicted on a still suffering country, seems at last to have been removed. 'When the Prime Minister said, immediately after the gravity of the recent flood disaster had become known, that the damage must be treated on a national basis, he was speaking for the nation, and any deli- berate attempt to turn the question into a party matter would have been an attempt to damage national unity. Now the House of Commons, having got through Tuesday's debate on flood damage payments in a calm and dignified manner, can direct its attention to the strictly practical problems of relief, rehabilitation of land and other property, and (through the Waverley Committee) to the examination of the causes of last month's disaster with a view to determining'future action. It is, of course, still necessary, as a mere contribution to the Proper performance of the vast work now to be carried out, that Parliament should remain constantly vigilant in its scrutiny of the Government's own measures. This may lead to occasional brushes such as that which took place between the Home Secretary and Mr. Edward Evans (the Labour Member for Lowestoft) in the Commons last week—but which was not repeated this Tuesday. Vigilance need not be taken to imply hostility. The country must make the best of .a bad job on the East Coast, and in the Scottish forests now strewn with fallen timber. After any such disaster, of a kind not seen for Centuries, it would probably have to do just that, since there i:, no insurance organisation that could reasonably be required to carry the whole of such a huge and sudden weight, and no Way of retrieving the loss of life or health. But part of the result of making the best of a bad job may be of permanent value, and that is the part which is now the business of the waverley Committee to discover.
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