The extraordinary attitude of the inhabitants of Gloucester to the epidemic arises from several causes. A heated controversy on the alleged evils and virtues of vaccination was a natural outcome of the previous epidemic, and the City is the scene of the labours of Great Britain's most prominent _anti-vaccinator and anti-vivisectionist, Dr. Walter Hadwen, who has a large local following. Dr. Hadwen asserts that there is not a solitary case of smallpox in the whole of Gloucester and in article entitled "The City of Dreadful Lies," written for a local newspaper, he has stated that there are no suf-forers of any kind in the local isolation hospital and all the' people who have been sent there are doing their best to kill time. Through the "'Prussianism of vaccine worshippers," he says, parents have been heart-broken at the forcible abduction of their children, and the -city is in a state of revolt. Dr. Hadwen is a pillar of local nonconformity and few of his followers are church people.
To counteract this possibly' per-vicious propaganda the Bishop of Gloucester (Dr. Hadlam) issued a pastoral letter to be read in all the local churches. In this he says that, "The first cause of the outbreak was the neglect to be vaccinated. To refuse to be vac cinated was wrong from a Chris-tain point of view. The -second cause of the outbreak is bad housing, but that would not be an effective cause if all people were vaccinated. There were two things they must consider, first they must be vaccinated themselves and then see that everybody else was." It is possible that the good Bishop, immersed in his pastoral labours, is somewhat out of touch with the present insurgent spirit and touchiness of Labour or he would have couched his excellent advice in a rather different form, for its immediate result was to range La-hour on the side of the antivaccinationists. The Daily Herald" gave prominence to a mocking commentary on_ the Bishop's effort to cope with the problem and his reservations on the local housing problem, which is admittedly very bad.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.