THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1907. "THE CHILDREN OF THE NATION."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8376, 9 March 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1907. "THE CHILDREN OF THE NATION."

decent proposals for the extension of the system of supplying meals to school-children at Home give additional interest to a book written by Sir John Gorst and entitled "The Children of the Nation." Sir John deals earnestly and seriously with the attitude of the State towards the waifs and derelicts of child-life in the great cities of Britain. Having been responsible for years for the administration of the country's educational system, he writes with a full knowledge of the deplorable condition of things which prevails. The picture presented is one that may well make statesmen and social reformers anxious. Thousands of the children on whom the future of England depends are dying off or languishing through a life of disease and general physical wretchedness. The State compels them to attend school; but there has been no compulsion on anybody to see that they are properly fed and clothed. The school is a haven of refuge from the squalor and misery of their homes; or, rather, it would be if they had sufficient vigour of body to enjoy it, and enter heartily into its various activities. In respect of care for her children England, even so late as twenty years ago, was setting an example to other nations. Now they have so far bettered her instructions that she is lagging behind, and the palm has passed to Germany. The result is that she is breeding a horde of unfortunate young people, who are to be the paupers, the imbeciles, and the de- j generates of the future. It would be a terrible mistake for us to as-1 sume the lurid descriptions which reach us that this state of I things prevails overall, or even the greater part, of Great Britain, j Hundreds of thousands of the children of the Old Country are as well- | fed and as comfortable and happy as our own. But there is this wretched element, and it is too appallingly large and too obviously growing to be ignored.