Foreign News: Out of the Mouths of Babes

Britain’s babies, of whom there are more now than for 20 years,* are running short of rubber. Last week, dour, determined Laborite James Murray told an attentive House of Commons: “I have a letter from a woman who has given birth to twins. She is unable to feed these two children. She has four bottles in the house with only one nipple.”

Members snickered. Snapped Murray: “It is nothing to laugh about! What is the Minister going to do about it?”

Oliver Lyttelton, President of the Board of Trade and Production Minister, rose elegantly. Rubber, he said, would be released for nipples, but “we cannot adopt the same policy for soothers [pacifiers].” The Minister explained: “Soothers are a means of deception to which, in view of the imminence of the general election, the Government cannot lend themselves.”

* The baby crop for the first nine months of 1944 was 567,130— the highest since 1925’s record 843,405.