TOLL OF THE HOLIDAYS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 267, 9 October 1933, Page 8

TOLL OF THE HOLIDAYS.

DR OWNINGS 'IN ENGLAND. At various holiday resorts within easy reach of London over 50 persons have been drowned during the past fortnight (wrote a London correspondent on September 10). Most of these fatalities were the result of a want of trained life-savers and appropriate life-saving apparatus. A visitor from the Dominions would be astonished at the backwardness of the authorities at English watering places—a backwardness which has its basis in deliberate policy. Vying with one another in their endeavour to attract holiday-makers, they convey the impression that the sea-bathing at their respective towns is so safe that the element of risk does not exist. They are evidently afraid that if they provide a corps of life-savers people will take fright and go elsewhere, concluding that they are in the midst of danger. This may appear absurd, but it is a fact. True, some measure of precaution is taken at the more populous resorts to shepherd those who go in for a dip, but it cannot be said that the task is taken seriously. The consequence is that incautious bathers who get out ,of their depth, even in the smooth water of the Channel, are drowned because there is no efficient method of assisting them. Year after year there are loud outcries and vociferous promises to do something about it, but nothing happens. The sea continues to claim its victims, young and old, while each resort is waiting for the other to take the initiative.

Recently some of the London newspapers, in condemning this needless waste of life, pointed to the splendid example set by Australia and New Zealand, and the necessity for adopting a similar life-saving organisation. They suggested to the public that what had proved an unqualified success in the Dominions could at least be tried in Britain, where, after all, there was practically no surf to contend with. It was a system of insurance, they argued, that would “pay” any seaside town, or, for that matter, any riverside town. But effort and ink alike seem to have been thrown away. Apart from a few spasmodic attempts at amateur organisation, the position is as before, and is likely to remain so.