is an insufficient supply of water), and at one school we were told that the infants had learnt to eat without spilling their food; but it is obvious that very little can be done. The method of serving the midday meal is even less "educational." We have seen that the Education Committee refused to make arrangements for the provision of a suitable dinner, and decided instead that the teachers should distribute at midday to the most necessitous children any surplus left over from breakfast. The dinner thus consists usually of merely a piece of bread, with perhaps some cocoa, if any remains from the morning meal. The bread is given to the children to take away, and they eat it on their way home. What renders the failure of the Education Authority to pay any regard to the educational aspect of the meal more disastrous is that it is the teachers who supervise the meals. Many of them bitterly resent the way in which the meals are served; as one pointed out to us, the girls are taught in the school how to set a table, but the practical example which the teachers are forced to show will have much more weight than any theoretical teaching. A year ago the head teachers presented a memorial to the Education Committee, urging that the schools should no longer be used. As "a temporary expedient," runs the communication, they "have loyally endeavoured to work this imperfect system, but they now feel that the time has arrived for the adoption of a scheme on a more satisfactory and permanent basis.... The serving of meals in cloak-rooms, cellars or basements, and other unsuitable places, calls for immediate remedy. In some cases the children receive their meals whilst sitting upon the floor; in all, the bread is of necessity placed upon the dirty desks. In others, there is no adequate supply of hot water and towels for use in cleansing the utensils. Under such conditions there can be no training in habits of decency or cleanliness.... When the meals are served in class-rooms, the desks and floors are rendered unfit for immediate school use, and a smell of food permeates the atmosphere. To combat this state of affairs as far as possible, the teachers have, in many cases, to wash the desks and brush the floors. In other cases, the children are hurried over their meals in order that the necessary preparations for lessons may be made."[255] To this the Education Committee replied that, while they agreed "that an ideal system of feeding the children would be by properly equipped centres quite apart from the school premises, the cost of such would be prohibitory, and that quite possibly the pressing of such a change would jeopardise the continuance of the exercise of the powers given by the Provision of Meals Act, now so beneficially and economically administered." The committee hoped "that the teachers will recognise the Authority's financial difficulties in the way of the introduction of a more desirable system, and, pending the arrival of the long-expected