his wife, whatever their views might be upon the nationalisation of railways and mines, have no intention of demanding or submitting to the nationalisation of children. The only alternative is to improve the home of Alf Smith and Emma, or at least to see that little Susie and Jane, their daughters, by some means or other, grow up determined to give their children better training, more care, more space, and higher ideals, though not necessarily greater joyousness, than were theirs in early childhood. But this is not a sociological treatise. There are people enough already who have remedies to suggest for all the evils of the day. Let me return to Lewis Carroll’s Alice who so engagingly dreamed herself into Wonderland. She belonged to a day before any remarkable innovations in children’s education had arrived among us. The kindergarten may have been in existence then, but Montessori and Dalcroze were not heard of. I have sometimes wondered, I must confess, if the admirable principles of these and other educational spell-workers are not too apt to develop into fads and poses. There are people to-day, for instance, who have a passion for making education play and and play education instead of keeping the two healthily separate. Any decent English girl or boy, if not unduly forced, can learn the rudiments of the three Rs without being beguiled into it by an artful series of games with a purpose which have neither the fun of hide-and-seek nor the zest of hunt-the-slipper. Surely it is a fallacy to proceed on the assumption that children’s brains are sluggish and revolt as naturally against systematic instruction as the palate against unpleasant medicine: a child’s brain, on the contrary, is extraordinarily active and pecks about after knowledge as keenly as any farmyard chicken after grains. While we may be thankful that there is a wholesome fear to-day of brutalising young minds by useless drudgery, dull, formal methods and unsympathetic discipline, we should take care to avoid the equally great danger of overstimulating that very delicate and sensitive instrument, a child’s brain, by encouraging it to absorb too much. After all, we do not encourage a child to eat more than it can digest. Besides, a good trainer knows that conscious effort, without which no activity can produce the best results, cannot grow suddenly out of unconscious following of impulse. The period of effort may be as short as you please and be followed by as long periods as you like of pleasant relaxation, but the mind cannot be accustomed too early to struggling against inertia, and a system of education which only follows the path of inertia can hardly be the best one.