When we get rid of these clogs to industry known as Departments, we shall, I am sure, all work together to the common good, in making England a self-supporting country, and the men and women of England a self-respecting people, and in point of health an A 1 people instead of the C 3 into which we are settling down complacently. The statistics of the grades recently published appeared to me to be the greatest cause for alarm that England has known for years. And the worst of the matter is that when one asks if a more ample proof of decadence has ever been revealed, people smile and inquire if the result of the recent visits of the British to France and Italy and Palestine and Mesopotamia suggest any evidence of decadence. They forget that it was only the A classes that left England; only the A classes were killed or maimed; the lower grades remained at home with their wives in order that the decadent breed might be carried on with emphasised decadence. If I were asked in what direction one should look for the salvation of the race from the rush into Avernus toward which we have been descending, I would certainly say,-- “The garden and the allotment only will arrest our feet on the downward path.” If the people of England can throw off the yoke of the Cinema and take to the spade it may not yet be too late to rescue them from the abyss toward which they are sliding. And it is not merely the sons who must be saved, the daughters must be taken into account in this direction; and when I meet daily the scores of trim and shapely girls with busts of Venus and buskins of Diana, walking--_vera incessu patuit dea_--as if the land belonged to them--which it does--I feel no uneasiness with regard to the women with whom England's future rests. If they belong to the land, assuredly the land belongs to them. But the garden and not the field is the place for our girls. We know what the women are like in those countries where they work in the fields doing men's work. We have seen them in Jean François Millet's pictures, and we turn from them with tears. “Women with labour-loosened knees And gaunt backs bowed with servitude.” We do not wish to see them in England. I have seen them in Italy, in Switzerland, and on the Boer farms in, South Africa. I do not want to see them in England. Agriculture is for men, horticulture for women. A woman is in her right place in a garden. A garden looks lovelier for her presence. What an incongruous object a jobbing gardener in his shirt-sleeves and filthy cap seems when seen against a background of flowers! I have kept out of my garden for days in dread of coming upon the figure which I knew was lurking there, spending his time looking out for me and working feverishly when he thought I was coming.