The Basis of Social Reconstruction

Extract

A child playing with wooden bricks will happily knock over his construction and then earnestly and hastily build up another tottering house that is to last no longer than its predecessor. At present we are like the child feverishly trying to pick up the bits, even while they are still falling, to set to work on some new arrangement of the same material. Society must receive all our attention. It has fallen to pieces and so with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men we are trying to put it together again.

Sir William Beveridge dominates the playroom of the rebuilders and his Report presents the most comprehensive of all the hundreds of plans for the next tottering structure. But the materials are much the same as before only a little more pronounced in their shape. Praise is due to the Report as well as to its author for its high aims as well as for the knowledge and industry that has given it birth. Social security for the whole nation, freedom from want and disease, employment for all, to bring such blessings within reach of each citizen in the Kingdom explains the almost unanimous acclamation it has received. For many years now the Popes have been proposing a new way of life that will bring security for low as well as high.