It is not an advantage, but a disadvantage, that child-protection is necessary to-day. The country which has need of numerous institutions for purposes of social betterment is in a bad way; and, indeed, the more of such institutions it needs, the worse must its condition be. These considerations apply to other institutions as well as to child-protection. Just as it is desirable that no institutions for social betterment should be necessary, so also we might wish that child-protection were superfluous. To put the matter in other words, it is desirable that in any country those conditions should not exist which have made it necessary to establish institutions for social betterment. The country which has no need for such institutions stands at a higher level than the country to which they are still indispensable. But of two countries which have equal need for such institutions, the one which possesses them stands at a higher level than the one in which they have not yet come into existence. This last consideration must not be forgotten when we are making a comparative study of child-protection in various countries. Child-protection to-day is solely concerned with attempts to palliate the evils which necessarily result from the essential nature of the social organism of to-day, and is not concerned with efforts to transform the nature of that organism. Child-protection alleviates some of the symptoms of capitalism, but does nothing to prevent the ever-renewed production of such symptoms. Thus we see that child-protection is not a scientific therapeutic method, for such a method tends, as time passes, to render itself superfluous. Child-protection is an important department of social activity. But there are other much more important departments. If the amount of wealth expended for the purposes of child-protection is excessive, means requisite to the attainment of other ends will be sacrificed, and the pursuit of much more important aims may be rendered impossible. The expenditure upon child-protection is useful to this extent, that it prevents the occurrence of much harm, and yet to-day a large proportion of such expenditure is quite useless, because the evils which child-protection attempts to relieve are not, as a matter of fact, all relieved. Capitalism is the source of the factors which make child-protection necessary. Hence all our efforts for child-protection are useless so long as we continue to create institutions by which capitalism is protected and strengthened. Child-protection to-day is in essence nothing more than a number of repressive measures, which are necessary only because capitalism will not permit the desired ends to be obtained by the use of preventive methods, owing to the fact that prevention would involve the destruction of capitalism. Thus the destruction of capitalism is a postulate, not of socialism merely, but also of child-protection. Unfortunately, few people as yet recognise that prevention is the