There is something attractive about such elemental simplicity as that of the Czar who drew a straight line across the map from St. Petersburg to Moscow, when his counsellors asked him what course he wished a railroad between the two cities to follow, and said, “Let it be straight, like that.” I suppose that every worker for social improvement has felt oppressed at times by the complexity of our social problems, and wished that they could be solved in some such simple and direct manner. But social progress is not made along straight lines in general. What seems to the agitator axiomatic, simple, and easy, appears to the constructive statesman doubtful, complex, and difficult. There is at least one European municipality, however, which has solved this problem of the feeding of school children in a delightfully direct and simple way. The city of Vercelli, Italy, has made feeding as compulsory as education![I] Every child, rich or poor, is compelled to attend the school dinners provided by the municipality, just as it is compelled to attend the school lessons. Not only food, but medical care and attention, are provided for every child, as a right, on the principle that it is absurd and wrong to attempt to develop the mind of a child while neglecting its body. It is a mocking judgment of our civilization that such a natural, intelligent solution of a pressing problem should be impossible for our greatest and richest cities, though attained by a little Italian city like Vercelli. I do not suppose that it will be found possible to apply such a principle generally until many years have passed and our social system has been modified considerably. In the meantime, some less thorough and comprehensive system, like that of the French _Cantines Scolaires_, for instance, will probably be adopted. It is not, however, my intention here to advocate any particular scheme. I can only reiterate that the feeding of school children is an imperative, urgent, and vital necessity, and emphasize certain principles. Elsewhere I have given a résumé of the methods adopted in several other countries,[J] and I need not, therefore, go over that ground. Whatever is done should be free from the taint of charity. There must be no resorting to the pernicious principle, sometimes advocated by our so-called “practical reformers,” of subsidizing charitable societies to undertake the work. There must be no discrimination against the child whose parents have failed to do their duty. The child of the inebriate, the idler, or the criminal must not be made to suffer for his parent’s sin. The state has no right to join with the sins of the fathers in a conspiracy to damn the children’s lives, and only a perverted sense of the relation of the child to the state could have made it possible for such a proposal to be made. Upon the principle that every child born into the world has a right to a full and free supply of the necessities of life during the whole period of