If these mothers were forced to let their children go barefoot, things would of course be otherwise; and they would be forced, practically, were they called upon to do so for patriotism’s sake, for the sake of saving leather that the soldiers might have plenty of good shoes. There would be no loss of caste then in banishing shoes and stockings; on the contrary, it would be the correct thing to do, the ‘just so’; and they would do it right gladly, thankful that they could do it without exciting comment. And by doing it, they would both lighten immeasurably the heavy burden they themselves bear, and add to their children’s chance of developing into sturdy men and women, men and women able to do good work for their country, securing for themselves a fair share of life’s comfort and pleasure the while. For there is proof and to spare that boys and girls alike are better off all round, stronger, more vigorous, more active, without shoes than with them, unless the shoes be of better quality than those most of the respectable poor can afford to buy. Never would the Strassburg Committee have ventured to call upon parents to let their offspring go barefoot had they not known that, even so far as health was concerned, quite apart from the saving of leather, good, not harm, would result. For in Germany, whoever else may go on short commons, children, the Fatherland’s future defenders, are always well cared for. One of the reasons, indeed, that the Committee give for issuing their notice is that going barefoot is not only economical, and therefore, as things are, patriotic, but also hygienic. And that it is, most of us can see for ourselves. There are districts both in Scotland and Ireland, to say nothing of Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, where there is hardly a shoe to be found. Yet the people there are more stalwart than in any district in England where every foot has its shoe. The finest lads I have ever come across are certainly the Montenegrin; and not one in twenty of them has either a shoe or a stocking. The only reformatory I have known where the little inmates are physically quite on a par with other children, as strong, alert, and light-hearted as other children, is the Eggenburg Reformatory, in Lower Austria, where both boys and girls all go barefoot, in winter as well as in summer.