Here are we, satisfied after a good dinner. Yet I know that this very night hundreds of little children have gone to bed with nothing but a cup of cold water for their supper, and that in the morning they will have nothing but water for their breakfasts. What do you expect them to become? What sort of citizens of this great Empire City will they make? I have seen the poor as they live, and I tell you that, much as they may forgive you for many things, they will never forgive you for neglecting the children--the children stunted in body and mind for want of food, old before their time, with the souls, not of children, but of old men and women. A nation which neglects its children is damned. You are neglecting London's hungry children by leaving the provision of meals to private subscriptions which all over London have failed to meet the little people's need. You never talk of running the Army and Navy and the defence of the Empire generally by means of private subscriptions and charitable doles. Yet the thing that is of greater importance at the present moment than the Army and Navy to us, as an Imperial people, is that the children who are going to inherit the responsibility of the government of our vast Empire should be properly fed and clothed _now_. What have you to say to facts like these? A woman, early the other morning, as soon as the shutters were down, entered a pawnbroker's shop, and took from under her shawl, in a shamefaced manner, a small bundle. The pawnbroker's assistant unrolled the bundle, and there, clean washed and scarcely dry, was the woman's chemise. She had taken it off her body, washed and partly dried it, and to the pawnbroker's assistant she said: "For the love of God, lend me sixpence on this." "I cannot," said the assistant. "It's not worth it." "Then give me threepence," pleaded the woman. "I must give my children a mouthful before they go to school this morning." You object to feed the children because it would increase the rates. Yes, it would increase the rates by a farthing. But indirectly you are increasing the rates to a far greater extent by starving the children. By neglecting them now you will be compelled to feed and shelter them later in life in workhouses and infirmaries. I appeal to you to rise to a sense of your responsibilities, and see that these children are fed. If it meant that I should be driven out of public life by feeding starving children out of the rates, I should feed them out of the rates. I should then have done my duty. The appeal moved the Council deeply, but on a party vote he was defeated, many of the Councillors who voted against him crowding round him afterwards to assure him of their individual sympathy.