formation. True, again, partially—for evidently, even after the labour of generations, it is as yet half-way. Yet here, too, the main line of progress is well foreshadowed.
But the really vital and momentous thought, only now beginning to dawn upon the public mind, is that in all the catalogue of her achievements England has neglected her own breed of men. Walk through the streets of Gath or of Ascalon, where three-quarters of our populace are now gathered together, and see if that be not true. The cause of their condition is the physical breakdown of the family over large areas before the pressure of industrialism.
Five proofs of that truth are available, and cannot be too much laid to heart. Parents, under the stress of the industrial struggle, have not been able to resist the temptation of sacrificing the health and strength of their children for the sake of the money which the latter can earn. Next, the State, which deliberately, and of set policy, had left to the family the task of educating its offspring, found that such a task and duty had been hopelessly neglected by the mass of our families, and that education must, in consequence, be made obligatory upon them, if this country were not to be distanced by its rivals, and if its freedom were not to be a broken reed. The third proof has been found in the figures of infantile mortality, furnishing evidence of parental indifference or incompetence to a serious extent. And then, too, the recent investigation
