this world is a human life, and when you realise that you are murdering systematically thousands of children every year because they cannot get proper food--they cannot even get pure milk in the great cities of our land. One of our first duties in this nation is to see that every child has a right to the best and most ample provision for its physical needs. That should be the primary charge upon the nation. I am not here to-night to discuss the great question of the State maintenance of children. Personally I am absolutely in favour of it."[823] Experience of other nations has taught that the institution of free meals for necessitous school-children is immediately and very grossly abused by unscrupulous parents easily able to feed their children. From Milan, for instance, we learn that "When in 1900 this service began, meals were given on only 133 days out of a possible 174 days of school attendance. The outlay was then set down at 98,300 francs. During the second year, however, free meals were served on 153 days and cost 149,337 francs. In 1903 the free meals cost the municipality 247,766 francs and 277,603 in 1904. The outlay will now exceed 300,000 francs, and the number of pupils who manage to establish their claim to be fed gratuitously is ever increasing."[824] British experiments of free feeding on a smaller scale have shown that "In the large majority of cases the children who are sent to school hungry are so sent, not by honest and poor parents, but by those who have an imperfectly developed sense of parental responsibility and are willing to shuffle out of the duty of providing for their children if they think anybody else will undertake it for them. These parents are not in need of assistance--they are perfectly well able to feed their own children; but if free meals can be had for the asking, they are not too proud to tell the child to ask. It relieves the mother of the trouble of preparing a meal for the child, and the money saved can be used for some more attractive form of personal expenditure."[825] At Birmingham, for example, numerous applications were made by the teachers to the relieving officers on behalf of children under their care, but when inquiries were made into the circumstances of the parents it was found that many of them were earning over thirty shillings a week, and in one case the parent was in constant employment with an average wage of _3l. 17s. 6d._ a week.[826] In Bolton, where during the winter of 1904-5 a charitable society provided free meals for children in certain centres of the town, it was found that the parents of some of the children who were partaking of the free meals so provided, and even reported as being underfed, were in receipt of as much as from _2l._ to _3l._ a week.[827] In Fulham (London) "More than one hundred names were sent to the Boards of Guardians of children who were adjudged to be underfed and were receiving meals from public charity. In hardly one of these cases did