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The purpose of the paper is to show that, despite comprehensive coverage of services for TB provided by a public‐private partnership for TB control in Patan, a city in Nepal, case finding is low, compared with the target based on an Annual Risk of Tuberculosis Infection (ARTI) of 4 per cent. Doubts have been raised as to the appropriateness of the target. The objective of the study was to estimate the number of new TB cases occurring in Patan, to assess whether the target was appropriate.

In the paper doorstep interviews were conducted with all households in the study area, followed by in‐depth interviews of households with possible or probable TB cases. The survey findings were validated against the patient registers of the five DOTS centres in Patan.

The paper finds that, among the study population of 36,918, the household survey identified 17 smear‐positive TB cases (none privately‐treated) and 24 smear‐negative/extra‐pulmonary cases (including four privately‐treated cases). Validation against the DOTS patient registers indicated that the survey was 54 per cent complete. After adjusting for incompleteness, the number of smear‐positive cases in the study area was estimated as 31, equivalent to an incidence of 85 smear positives per 100,000 population and an ARTI of 1.7 per cent.

The paper shows that using the ARTI may lead to misleadingly high targets for urban TB control. Unrealistically high targets may cause TB workers to become demoralised, and useful strategies to be abandoned. Therefore, further work is needed to identify better ways of setting targets.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an up‐to‐date overview of Tajikistan's health system, focusing on the main factors affecting health systems development. The wider contextual environment is to be explored, focusing on political, social and economic issues. Different elements of the health system including health policy, governance, service delivery, human resources and health financing are reviewed in the light of their development over the past decade.

The paper shows that the Republic of Tajikistan is in transition. Formerly one of the most neglected republics within the USSR, the country became independent in 1990 and faced the civil conflict shortly thereafter. In the last few years there have been major public sector reforms with health reforms formally launched in the late 1990s. Little information about current Tajikistan is widely available.

The paper finds that the progress of health reforms in Tajikistan has been relatively slow compared with neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. This is largely due to the effects of civil war in the mid‐1990s and significant out‐migration of qualified experts, but it can also be attributed to an inability of central government to adequately adapt to the requirements of transition.

The paper shows that many problems are still to be overcome by the health system, ranging from operational issues related to service delivery to strategic issues such as formulating an explicit privatisation policy, reducing fragmentation of, and aligning, external aid. However, some recent developments, such as adoption of a country health reform conception, a health financing strategy, and willingness of central government to improve coordination, suggest that improvements are possible.

The purpose of the paper is to show that community involvement is a successful way of overcoming certain barriers to the successful management of the current tuberculosis epidemic, namely delayed presentation and non‐completion of treatment. Volunteers are an important resource for engaging with the community. This research, conducted in an urban TB treatment centre in Nepal, seeks to investigate the motivations of TB volunteers, and how these motivations can be increased to involve volunteers, and the community, in fulfilling their maximum potential in delivering successful TB treatment programmes.

Semi‐structured interviews were carried out with 26 TB volunteers, followed by volunteer discussion groups. Topics covered included: detailed accounts of the volunteers' many and varied roles; motivations – how they initially became involved and why they continue to be involved; incentives for volunteering; problems they have encountered; family and friends' attitudes to their volunteering; and the future of TB volunteering.

The findings show that the TB volunteers are involved in many important roles. Volunteers initially became involved, having been asked or informed about the programme by area committee members, staff or friends. Most were also involved in other voluntary work.

This paper gives recommendations for volunteer programmes in developing countries including: sustained communication and contact between volunteers and the organisation; volunteer programmes based in a centre with an established community focus; flexibility of time commitment; regular recruitment drives for volunteers from different generations and status levels; and the use of training as a possible incentive for volunteering.

We have reprinted the powerful letter addressed to the Daily Mail by MR. H. W. WILSON, the author of “Ironclads in Action,” advocating the immediate adoption of a policy of reprisals for the Zeppelin murder raids. In our view it is the duty of every journal, whatever may be its raison d'être, to assist in keeping the attention of the public fixed upon this matter, to aid in preventing the general feeling of disgust and indignation from cooling down, and to support those who have the brains to understand the nature of the Hun in their efforts to compel the Government to adopt the most effective means at present available to put an end to the murderous excursions of the German vermin into this country. As MR. WILSON points out, the deliberate Hun policy of slaying women, children and non‐combatants is either permitted by the laws of war recognised by civilised nations or it is not permitted by those laws. If it is permitted, “then clearly the Power which refrains from making similar attacks on the enemy's towns, villages, and residential districts, loses greatly from the military standpoint.” If it is not permitted then the only course— “the force behind the laws of War”—is a policy of drastic reprisals. Moreover, it is the only course that the Hun can understand. The methods of “frightfulness” are definitely laid down in the German military system as methods to be ruthlessly followed whenever this can be done with impunity and the fear of reprisals is also definitely laid down as the only consideration which is to be allowed to operate as a check upn “frightfulness.” “The Power which fails to take reprisals when a great offence is committed is as the negligent judge or the faithless jury that acquits a murderer. It sins against humanity … it encourages the criminal in his crime.”

President, Charles S. Goldman, M.P.; Chairman, Charles Bathurst, M.P.; Vice‐Presidents: Christopher Addison, M.D., M.P., Waldorf Astor, M.P., Charles Bathurst, M.P., Hilaire Belloc, Ralph D. Blumenfeld, Lord Blyth, J.P., Colonel Charles E. Cassal, V.D., F.I.C., the Bishop of Chichester, Sir Arthur H. Church, K.C.V.O., M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., Sir Wm. Earnshaw Cooper, C.I.E., E. Crawshay‐Williams, M.P., Sir Anderson Critchett, Bart., C.V.O., F.R.C.S.E., William Ewart, M.D., F.R.C.P., Lieut.‐Colonel Sir Joseph Fayrer, Bart., M.A., M.D., Sir Alfred D. Fripp, K.C.V.O., C.B., M.B., M.S., Sir Harold Harmsworth, Bart., Arnold F. Hills, Sir Victor Horsley, M.D., F.R.C.S., F.R.S., O. Gutekunst, Sir H. Seymour King, K.C.I.E., M.A., the Duke of Manchester, P.C., Professor Sir Wm. Osler, Bart., M.D., F.R.S., Sir Gilbert Parker, D.C.L., M.P., Sir Wm. Ramsay, K.C.B., LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., Harrington Sainsbury, M.D., F.R.C.P., W. G. Savage, M.D., B.Sc., R. H. Scanes Spicer, M.D., M.R.C.S., the Hon. Lionel Walrond, M.P., Hugh Walsham, M.D., F.R.C.P., Harvey W. Wiley, M.D., Evelyn Wrench.

It is probably well known to the majority of educated Englishmen that in the United States of America two kinds of Government exist side by side, and are jointly responsible to the people for the conduct of the external and internal relations of the Republic. These two forms of government are represented by the Federal Government and by the several governments of the different States of the Union.

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose piecemeal. In the absence of banks and treasuries that exchanged paper monies at face value for specie monies on demand, colonial governments experimented with other ways to anchor their paper monies to real values in the economy. These mechanisms included tax-redemption, land-backed loans, sinking funds, interest-bearing notes, and legal tender laws. I assess and explain the structure and performance of these mechanisms. This was monetary experimentation on a grand scale.

The subject of food and drug legislation is again before Parliament. It is proposed, under MR. JOHN BURNS' Food and Drugs Bill (see this Journal, August, 1913), to empower the Local Government Board to make Regulations which shall define an article of food or a drug with regard to its nature, substance, and quality. The Board will only issue Regulations of this kind after making such enquiry as in its opinion may be necessary.

It may be noted with great satisfaction that the Local Government Board has considered the question of, and examined as far as possible in all its bearings—chemical, hygienic, and commercial—the processes of bleaching flour by chemical means, and of the addition to flour of foreign substances that are euphemistically referred to by certain persons as “improvers.”