UNDERFED CHILDREN.

Evening Post, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 20 May 1905, Page 14

UNDERFED CHILDREN.

Tho Spectator, while making certain concessions on this subject, holds that there is still a long road to bo travelled before the conclusion to which Dr. ilac nnmnra and Sir John Gorst would lead is reached. "For tho State, as a matter of course, to pro Tide meals for underfed chi.drcn fctill seems to us to involve an entire disregard of parental responsibility. Mr. Keir ITardie, indeed, made tho p.tst. action of tho State in this respect an arpument for going fnrtker in the same din ci ion. The State, he said, htwl done much lo hrenk dtwr the sense of parental rwponsnbiliry. 'Therefore the Stnte should btep in and supply rho place that tho pnrcnt formerly txx'npied.' Mr. Keir Bardie's argument 6ocrm> t\> us to point to the directly opposite conclusion. The State has done so much to break down the sense of parental rceponisibilitY that it is or the utmost impoitance that it should go no further in the same direction. It miiy be that the State did wrong in makiuc education free. It may be that the pliin originally adopted of leaving puronhs who cou'd pay the school fee to do so, nnd only helping those whose innbility lo p»V Iho fee established, was wiser un'l mirx than that which ha.i bcon oubdlitutal for it. There ia no reoinn to suppose that parents value edutntioii more highly now that it is given to them without payment, or that they put tho money saved to any hotter «we. But when the abolition of school fees was being debated doubters were reproached for ltiying unnuccwiiry stress upon the thin-cmt-of-thc-wcdgo analogy. KduCnlion. it w^S «aid. *,t-tn«ls in a w-hollj-dUTeront pofition from food or clothing. . . . . Coiikequontly you may safely make education free, because it stands uo entirely apart that il can never be made a precedent for making anything else 1 freo. Now, on tho contrary, the fact that education is freo is used us an argument for making other things frer. . . . What wa« never in any circumstiinceß to become 11 precedent is now trotted «« a precedent so comp'ptely on all fours with tho present nVinund ai to make any furt thrr argument unnecessury " "*rr t. — ttt. — r ' Po^t: "I can't get a bit of fire in my lines to-duy." Friend: "Hore's a match." "Is mnrrinqo a failure?" "You cun nevor tell till you'vo soon tho wedding prosouts."