A first and most natural conclusion that they reached, as equally has been the case in other lands, was that the illness of babies was due to the ignorance of mothers. Well, some of it is. And that has proven a very good place to begin. For every one else, from a plumber to a professor, there has always been training. Only a mother was supposed to find out how by herself. Now she no longer has to. The registration of Jimmie’s birth itself brought the Health Visitor, detailed from the public health department of the borough, for her first municipal call on his mother. She found Mrs. Smith up and trying to make gruel for herself. After serious expostulation, the maternity patient was induced to return to bed, where she belonged. Gruel, the white-faced woman who sank back on the pillow insisted, was easy. Why, probably she should not have minded it at all. Only that day before yesterday she had gotten up to do a bit of wash and had fainted at the tub. She hadn’t seemed to be just right since. Neither had the baby. The visitor leaned across the bed and removed a “pacifier” from the baby’s mouth. “But he has to have it,” said the mother, “he cries so much. All my children had it.” Looking round at them, the visitor saw that it was true. Each exhibited some form of the facial malformation that substantiated the statement. And one was deaf from the adenoid growth. And one was not quite bright. This was, of course, no time for a medical lecture beyond Mrs. Smith’s comprehension. But the effort was made to impress her with the simple statement of fact that a pacifier really was harmful for a child. There were inquiries about the baby’s feeding. No, of course, it was not being done scientifically. Well, the mother was told, if he were fed at regular intervals he would be in better condition not to cry all the time. And of course she herself must not get tired. It was Mrs. Smith’s first introduction to the practice of mothercraft as an art. At the school for mothers recently opened in the next square, where the Health Visitor had her enrolled within a month, her regular instruction began. The schools for mothers are now being established as rapidly as possible throughout the country. It is not an absolutely new enterprise. The first one in England, from which all the others are being copied, had been started in London by an American woman who had married an Englishman, Mrs. Alys Russell, a graduate of Bryn Mawr. Women recognised at once the value of the plan. It was only a question of popularising and paying for it. This the war has accomplished. Government will now defray 50 per cent. of the cost of a school under the operation of either voluntary agencies or borough authorities. Already 800 schools have been opened. Some of the most successful are at Birmingham, Sheffield and Glasgow, under municipal direction. Parliament, you see, by financing it has established the school for mothers as a national institution.