Green Sussex fading into blue With one gray glimpse of sea. We are not grateful to Mr. Kipling for helping to introduce telegraphese and abolishing the semi-colon; and we are already a little tired of the followers who exaggerate and weaken the tricks of his manner. One of them hoaxed The Times recently with a slangy effort which had not the snap of the real Kipling, though the imitator borrowed his name and address. These are the penalties of greatness; we condole with Mr. Kipling and remind him that there were several spurious Waverley novels.

When all is said that the devil's advocate can bring forward, we do not see how the genius of Mr. Kipling can be denied. He writes vivid Eng

The Saturday Review

stands for the English virtues there may be others more showy and amiable, but we hear quite enough of them and he belongs to the great tradition of poetry. Any critic of discernment can see that he is a Tennysonian, though he lacks the sleek complacency of the Victorian. bard. We get from him instead the rebuke of the Recessional, which some may be surprised not to see among the Twenty Poems. But its lesson is repeated in For All We Have and Are: No easy hope or lies

Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice

Of body, will, and soul.

The time for boasting and smooth prophesying is past: yet even now some people have not the grace or intelligence to know it.

THERE were duchesses in plenty at the inaugural meeting of 'Baby Week' at the Central Hall, Westminster, a fair sprinkling of Eurasians, innumerable Welfare Workers, some M.P.'s, the Bishop of Birmingham, and Sir Owen Seaman.

The meeting was called to emphasize the necessity for the better protection of the mothers and children of the nation'; and this being so, I naturally expected to find a large and representative body of both these classes. I was disappointed, no mothers demanding 'better protec

tion' were to be found, and three small infants, who wept unceasingly throughout the performance, represented the 'children of the nation.' Nor were the infants or their parents to be found at the Exhibition of Mothercraft, on the ground floor, where horrible diseases are exhibited, each in its separate bottle, backed by giant labels insisting that 'Eugenics is not murder,' and that 'lactic acid fermentation is the unseen foe which lurks in every glass of milk.' Side by side with the bottled horrors and the texts, a slum room is on view showing

how charming and tasteful the habitation can become under the guiding eye of the Health Visitor. Further items of interest include the display of giant charts 'proving' that insanity, blindness, and other diseases are on the increase among the poor, and will lead to the infection of the next generation unless 'welfare' work is made compulsory. For 'compulsion' is the end at which the duchesses, the Eurasians, the M.P.'s, the Bishop of Birmingham, Sir Owen Seaman, and their colleagues and supporters are aiming, though few of them have the courage openly to state the fact.

Some of the speakers impressed me as having a real sympathy with the poor, but the form their sympathy took was to demand further infringement of the liberty of the people, more and more interference of the state with the rearing and upbringing of their children.

The Bishop of Birmingham is enthusiastic for the 'Institution' as against the home. Environment, he told his audience may do away with the harm caused by heredity'; children born into a bad home became good citizens under the sheltering wing of an industrial school-witness a case within His Lordship's knowledge, where, of the two children of a poor and bad mother, the one brought up at home is a waster and a drunkard, the other removed from her depraving influence, 'holds a good position in the city!' Even so would 'the fostering care of a good government save the children of the nation.' The Bishop glowed at the thought, choked at the vision of the 'good position in the city' awaiting the objects of state care. It must not, however, be supposed that His Lordship approves of indiscriminate motherhood even though the offspring be in the fostering care of the government.

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'Unmarried mothers,' said the Bishop may be feeble-minded these should not be mothers' statement hardly in consonance with the announcement that 'Eugenics is not murder,' blazoned in the outer hall. Apart from the 'feeble-minded' His Lordship seemed in doubt as to whether any mother of the poorer class was competent to rear a child. 'Teach the growing girl mothercraft,' said the kindly enthusiast, 'train her how to nurse, and feed, and tend a child.' For a moment I thought the good man was actually suggesting the mother should act as instructress. I did him an injustice. 'Send them to institutions where experts are engaged,' he boomed. "There is such an institution near Birmingham where young girls are taught for a period of three months I wish it were three years all there is to know as to the upbringing of infants, where, I may add, there are always twelve to fifteen babies to be practised on!'

The Bishop's belief in 'the fostering care of a good government' is touching; where, however, does he hope to find it?

In the industrial school and similar institutions. Better the worst mother than the best beadle,' said Mr. Bernard Shaw. Does the poor Bishop really believe the contrary? I would implore him to try and do a little clear thinking, to try and realize where his argument will lead. On the one hand he calls for the birth of healthy children, on the other he advocates their upbringing by the state. Does he suppose that women will bear children, healthy or otherwise, if they are to be taken from them, placed in institutions to be practised upon' or brought up to take 'good positions in the city'?

Sir Owen Seaman did not openly profess his faith in the industrial

school. He stated that he believed in democracy if by democracy was meant equality of liberty-liberty for everyone to bring up their children in the best possible surroundings; and having expressed this commendable desire, he went on to emphasize the necessity of the formation of a Ministry of Health with compulsory powers, as to the supervision of children. Is Sir Owen prepared to demand the 'compulsory' supervision of the children of the inhabitants of Park Lane? Does he really think it important that the nurseries of Mayfair should be inspected by Welfare Workers, that the diet of an infant peer should be regulated by a Health Visitor? What then becomes of Sir Owen's belief in 'equality of liberty,' and why does he delude himself by such a phrase? Like the Bishop, he has not thought out his position; he is distressed by the suffering of the poor, and snatches at the easiest solution

he invokes the aid of the state! The same muddle-headedness characterized nearly all the speakers. Mrs. H. B. Irving delivered a very moving appeal on behalf of poor widows, dependent on outdoor relief. She exposed the working of the poor law system, the callousness of the guardians with the greatest possible effect

no one had a word to say, though we heard a great deal of the neglect of the nation's children by poor mothers! Even the advocate of the latter, Dr. Truly King, who insisted we should be ashamed rather than 'proud' of our 'institutions,' suggested that a state grant for the maintenance of young children would be an advantage.

That the mothers themselves should be consulted did not occur to anyone, that they might refuse to see the beauties of 'compulsion' was of no account. Nothing mattered compared with the importance of bringing the mothers of future 'wage earners, as one speaker phrased it, under effective supervision. There was no suggestion of 'compelling' landlords to build sanitary dwellings, penalizing employers who did not pay trade union rates, of punishing food profiteers, or prosecuting rich men who employed discharged soldiers at sweated wages. Yet all these things affect the condition of the poor mother and her children, and if a little of the energy and influence devoted to securing the establishment of the Ministry of Health had been employed in directing attention to these evils, much might have been done. And when the Bishop and Sir Owen Seaman, their friends and followers, have obtained state supervision of poor mothers, with their control by Welfare Workers, Health Visitors, and the rest, when they have obtained powers to remove the 'children of the nation' from the bad home to the good institution what remains? The children of the men who fought for the Bishop and his friends will be hopelessly enslaved; the conquerors of Prussia in the field will find the enemy installed in the hearthplace.

MR. HERBERT FISHER was recently described as a 'born Parliamentarian.' The compliment, wholly deserved, can have given him but little pleasure. Parliamentarians are not very popular just now, and it is doubtful whether they merited much praise at any time. To be a Parliamentarian is to know how to press a measure through the House whatever be the measure's design and purpose, to be able to drive a sufficient number of members into the useful lobby, to possess the sophist's trick of making any cause you like to appear the just cause. All these things Mr. Fisher has succeeded in doing, and we suppose that his Education Bill will pass into an Act of Parliament with as little delay as possible. And Mr. Fisher has proved himself a true Parliamentarian in adaptability as well as in persuasiveness. We are told that if a man, unaccustomed to business, goes into the city in middle life, he outdoes in astuteness and cunning those who have grown up in the tradition of commerce. So Mr. Fisher, who has spent many years in the wise seclusion of Oxford, swiftly goes beyond his colleagues in all the arts of the politician. His Education Bill is the bill of a politician, not of a statesman. It was certainly born in a department, and has already lived an inglorious life of some years in the dust of an office. Then some permanent official, knowing that Mr. Fisher was in want of a bill, washed the face of the poor foundling, furbished him up as well as possible, and gave the Minister a chance of conferring, as we are told, a greater benefit upon the world than it has known since 1870.

But is it of such a great benefit after all? It is true that it achieves many ends which seem desirable today. It will enormously increase the power of a public department; it will call into being thousands of inspectors and overseers; and it will invent a new set of crimes, which hitherto have escaped the eye of justice. Henceforth any poor boy or girl who, after the age of fourteen, refuses to receive. the palatial benefits of what the state calls education, will be fined the sum of £1 for a second offense. Who is expected to pay the money, we do not know. The parents will be charged only if they are guilty of connivance. But if the alternative to a fine is a term of imprisonment, then we may expect to see our jails constantly full, and may wonder piously at the might and ingenuity of the British

government.

What is offered as compensation for the new crime and the new punishment we do not yet know. We are told the number of hours assigned to the compulsory process of education. What is to be done in those hours is still a profound secret. Who shall choose the subjects to be dealt with? Shall the enforced student be permitted to select for himself what he desires to study, or shall he be obliged to follow the taste and fancy of others? Probably, as a sort of sanctity hangs about a ballot-box as the only virtue known to democracy is the virtue of numbers the poor victims will be invited to vote; and since minorities have no rights, forty-nine will be obliged to learn what is distasteful to them, if fifty-one insist upon it. But however the problem

be solved, we cannot believe that every boy and every girl will ever be free to choose his own method of study and his own teacher. That would be too costly an operation to be lightly undertaken even by those who are desirous of purchasing votes. And how shall the new Act be applied in the remoter villages? In towns some sort of a makeshift may be devised which shall persuade the masses that education is being handed out to them as a useful commodity. But in a village which contains (let us say) twenty young persons' ripe for the continuation school, the method of training will not be easy. To satisfy their needs some twenty teachers might be necessary, and these, even the zeal of the local authority would be powerless to provide.

Probably the Act will end in a series of what used to be called 'penny readings,' with magic lantern slides an ingenious method of pretending to teach without much trouble, and of safeguarding the 'young persons' against any risk of mental discipline. But what is also of great importance is that we should know the purpose of Mr. Fisher's new scheme. Does the government desire to increase the commercial value of our young persons,' to make them what is called in the jargon of politics a 'useful asset,' or does it cherish a love of education for its own sake? If national assets are our aim, the only kind of education which will be worth the money will be strictly technical. The 'young persons' of 'young persons' of England will be brought up upon a uniform plan, like so many little Huns, and if they do not serve the state efficiently they will be regarded as waste products. And whether they succeed or fail, the process of their education will have done much to abolish that diversity of talent and

temper which has always been the boast of England. We shall have our men and women cast to pattern, warranted to earn high wages and to vote as they are told. But we shall not look to them for surprise or invention. The soul of a part of the nation will be destroyed to satisfy the politicians.

If we are aiming at education for its own sake the only aim worth attaining - Mr. Fisher's bill is likely to fail also. Education, in this, the only true sense, is not good for everybody, and it can be forced upon all and sundry only with a vast waste of time and money. There are many thousands, in all classes, who rebel sturdily against education of any kind. They are not worse or better than others. Sincere in their dislike of books and all that books mean, they would be far more wisely employed working in the fields or in workshops

in using their hands, not their heads. No good can come of sending them to school until they are sixteen or eighteen, at the public expense, and no Act can hope to succeed which does not admit this obvious diversity of types. Indeed, the only sound education is that which a man gives himself, and that must come always, not by compulsion but by free will. Nor is there anybody less competent to give it, or to suggest how it shall be given, than a government department, and we can only pity the sad young persons' mentioned in the bill, some of whom will have education forced upon them, though they hate it, while others, genuinely desirous to educate themselves, will find that they are fobbed off compulsorily with a sample of learning concocted in an office, and duly inspected by obedient officials.

There should be, moreover, a limit set to what is provided freely by the