DEDICATED TO THE WORKING MEN AND 
WOMEN OF BRITAIN 
. . While the housing of the working classes has always 
been a question of the greatest social importance, never has it been 
so important as now. It is not too much to say that an adequate 
solution of the housing question is the foundation of all social 
progress. Health and housing are indissolubly connected. If 
this country is to be the country which we desire to see it become, 
a great offensive must be undertaken against disease and crime, 
and the first point at which the attack must be delivered is the 
unhealthy, ugly, overcrowded house in the mean street, which 
we all of us know too well. 
“ If a healthy race is to be reared it can be reared only in healthy 
homes; if infant mortality is to be reduced and tuberculosis to 
be stamped out, the first essential is the improvement of housing 
conditions ; if drink and crime are to be successfully combated, 
decent, sanitary houses must be provided. If ' unrest' is to be 
converted into contentment, the provision of good houses may prove 
one of the most potent agents in that conversion. . . ." 
His Majesty George V at Buckingham Palace, nth April, 1919. 
" It would be a black crime indeed if we were to sit still and 
do nothing by way of preparation to ensure that when these men 
come back they shall be provided with homes with as little delay 
as possible. To let them come back from the horrible water-logged 
trenches to something little better than a pigsty here would indeed 
be criminal on the part of ourselves, and would be a negation 
of all that has been said during this War that we could never repay 
these men for what they have done for us.”— Mr. Walter Long, 
in 1916, when President of the Local Government Board. 
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