logically that if the State acknowledges, as it does, the duty of training children after the age of three, there is even greater reason for extending that care to those below that age. They were convinced that the improved treatment of the children depends almost entirely upon the improved condition of their homes, and urged that, as the best place for all children under five is a good home, the State, in improving the condition of the children, should work in unison with the home. These principles mark a new departure. We are boldly to co-operate with the family, handling the raw material of our future, and adjusting it to the loom of the coming time.
It is sometimes said, and more often thought, that this is folly, that it is infinitely better for the weaklings to die rather than be coddled into a miserable existence, and that there are far too many as it is. But such a policy is unpractical. That thousands of infants should perish outright might be tolerable enough, were it not that the hundreds of thousands, who would muddle and worry through, would be so invalidated by the initial struggle as to grow up weaklings, and physical and mental degenerates. Therefore, a high infantile mortality rate inevitably connotes a far higher infantile deterioration rate. Hence, if the policy of neglect were adopted, the national physique would be endangered or doomed. Besides, modern science has indicated that not far from 90 per cent of our infants are born healthy, and
