has?—the rest should be simply a question of fact medically certified not here and there, but all over the country. Either it is justice and wisdom to feed the children, or it is not, and the scruples, however philosophical, of gentlemen prepared to watch other people’s children go hungry should not any longer be indulged. The estimated number of school children in England and Wales being fed by the State in 1911-1912 was 230,000 out of a school population of 5,357,367. The estimated number of this school population showing signs of malnutrition is variously given at from 10 to 20 per cent. Taking it at 15 per cent., or 800,000 children, we have more than half a million school children wanting meals and not getting them. This is appalling. There is no other word for it. But when the children _under_ school age who need food and are not getting it, are added to this number, the proportions of this national folly and inhumanity stagger the brain. It does not yet seem to be grasped that these children, who are fighting not only against insufficiency of proper food, but against bad air and bad housing, grow up with so much per cent. knocked off their national value. A stitch in time is supposed to save nine. A pound spent on the age of growth brings back many pounds from the age of stability. To those few who ride the doctrine of Liberty to the death of national health it may simply be said: So long as you have no hope of repealing compulsory education, you have no right to let children receive it in an unfit condition. Education and decent nourishment are inseparable; and decent nourishment is as necessary in the years that come before as in the years of schooling. No! In reality the principle is now rooted, and, like other things, it’s all a question of money. But a country with a capital of £16,000,000,000 and an income of £2,100,000,000 cannot really afford to allow this state of affairs to continue—especially after the gold-letting of this war. The state our national finances will be in makes it all the more imperative that we should have a well-nourished and efficient population, or we shall never get out of the slough.