The recommendations, which were finally adopted in March, 1900, provided for the establishment of a permanent committee, to be known as the "Joint Committee on Underfed Children." This was composed partly of members of the School Board, partly of representatives of various other bodies. Sub-committees, consisting of managers, teachers, School Board visitors and one or more co-opted outsiders, were to be appointed in each Board School, or group of Schools, where the necessity for providing meals for underfed children was felt, and these sub-committees were to make all necessary arrangements for the provision of meals.[82] The functions of the Joint Committee were limited. It was to receive reports from the sub-committees, to draw their attention to any defect which might appear in the selection of the children or the arrangements made for providing relief, to give them assistance by placing them in communication with a source of supply so as to enable them to obtain the necessary funds, to communicate with the chief collecting agencies when there was reason to fear that the funds might not be sufficient, and "generally to keep the public informed of what is being done to provide relief for underfed children, and to stimulate public interest in the work."[83] How far this effort to meet the need was successful we shall relate in a subsequent chapter.[84] Footnote 82: Similar committees had been in existence in several schools for some years. Footnote 83: Minutes of the London School Board, March 1, 1900, Vol. 52, pp. 854-5, 905. Footnote 84: See Chapter III. (c)--The Demand for State Provision. Soon after the beginning of the new century the agitation for some form of State feeding grew urgent and widespread. There was no attempt to deal with the matter in the Education Act of 1902, but from about this date onwards the question constantly recurred in Parliamentary debates, a sure indication that the question was interesting others besides the expert and the philanthropist. And to the old motives of sentiment and educational need was added a new motive, a motive specially characteristic of the present century and one which in some other directions threatens to become almost an obsession. This was the desire for "race regeneration," the conviction of the supreme importance of securing a physically efficient people. Formerly the tendency had been to sacrifice the needs of the child to the supposed moral welfare of the family, now the child was regarded primarily as the raw material for a nation of healthy citizens. The South African war had been partly instrumental in producing this extreme anxiety about physical unfitness, and two public enquiries--the Royal Commission on Physical Training in Scotland, and the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration--furnished abundant proof of the harm which was being done in this direction by the mal-nutrition of school children.