After dinner rest awhile."
What you need is a good sound constitutional every morning. If you see any houses, of course there is no objection to your looking at them. But keep on walking, mind; don't loiter. And come back to me in a month's time and we'll see how you are then.
[Exit Deputation, looking slightly dazed.
Almost equally successful is Dr. Addison's professional method in dealing with representatives of the Building Trades Unions. A bricklayers' leader, let us say, has expounded at great length the technical difficulties which prevent rapidity of construction.
Dr. Addison (softly and suddenly). Take a deep breath. (Bricklayer takes it.) Say ninety-nine! (Bricklayer tries hard.) Where do you feel the pain?
Bricklayer. In the shoulders and arms.
Dr. Addison. Tck, tck, we must go easy. Don't take it too quickly, and we'll have you right again before the year's out. Try three bricks a day and come and see me in a month's time.
These, however, are not the only methods by which Dr. Addison has attempted to remedy the crisis. At his suggestion a permanent sub-committee of the Cabinet, called "The Happy Homes for Heroes' Panel," was appointed, and it was during one of its sessions that the bright idea of Housing Bonds was originated, I believe by Sir Alfred Mond. If the campaign has not met with the success which it deserves, the cause is probably to be found in the slightly unfortunate title whose assonance suggests to the public mind the "House of Bondage" in the Psalms. It would have been better, I think, to adopt Mr. Austen Chamberlain's suggestion, which was "The Cosy Cot Combine."
However, things are not as bad as they might seem, and outside one large suburb the other day I observed a gang of bricklayers actually in operation, anxiously hovered over by a clerk from the Ministry, thermometer in hand.
I think I have forgotten to mention in this brief sketch that Dr. Addison has a frame of iron. Since I have said it of all the other Cabinet Ministers of whom I have spoken, I ought certainly to say it of Dr. Addison too. Like Mr. Lloyd George, like Mr. Winston Churchill, like Sir Eric Geddes, the Minister of Health and Housing has a frame of iron. All that he really needs is the concrete.