each, she lifted from the floor to the machine and vice versa- -a distance of about 4 ft. each way--180 shells, in all about 14 tons, and this in nine hours' time, night after night. Can one wonder that at last her muscles absolutely went on strike in revolt? And it is a matter of extreme regret to me personally that I have been unable to trace her labour. She is, moreover, only one of many women who, when overcome with fatigue, I have discovered to be pregnant, and I feel confident that the after effects of muscular fatigue will eventually assert themselves in those muscles upon whose strenuous work we rely in childbirth. The questions which naturally arise are: What effect will the results of this heavy toil have on infantile mortality? What is pre-natal care doing for this particular type of worker, and how can assistance be given? When the War is over woman's work of patriotism will still go on, for she must needs populate the countries which have been devastated, and, without being an alarmist, I foresee a time when the accoucheuse of the highest skill will be needed to give the utmost care to these future mothers of men. Care, accompanied with great sympathy and understanding, for truly the time of child-birth is the period when we shall see the effects of working with heavy machinery, of constant lifting of heavy weights, and I prophesy many interesting accouchement cases in the days to come. Ante-natal care does not exist for the munition worker. Indeed, pregnancy is hidden as long as possible. In the scheme of welfare. supervision which now exists this aspect appears to be overlooked, and in it I consider there should be wider scope for the trained nurse with the necessary gynæcological knowledge. She it is who should have the responsibility of choosing the type of physique for the type of machine with as keen an eye to "futurism as a foreman or manager has keenness for output of material. As things are now, foremen are reluctant to lose a good worker; the woman also, who does not consider the future aspect of her pregnancy, is not always willing to give up a good machine with good pay, and goes on working strenuously until she becomes indeed damaged goods or worse. I have especially in my mind a young girl who hid her pregnancy for six months whilst working on heavy shells; the result-a grave case of placenta prævia with loss of child. Another serious side of the question is that, during this period of hidden pregnancy, the growing babe is deprived of its legitimate shareof nourishment and the benefits of the hygiene of pregnancy. Here is where pre-natal care could step in. Before being appointed to a heavy machine, questions, which if asked by an unprofessional woman are considered offensive and meddling, can always be asked by a sympathetic and tactful nurse, who can even persuade women to report if they become pregnant, so that their type of work can be considered both for their own health and the well-being of the coming babe. I see so great a need for this almost every day; I do not know if other nurses observe the same thing, I only know I am touching the fringe of a very grave problem, and that mothers and mothers-to-be will suffer the consequences of manual toil. I know, too, that healthy children, who will in their turn grow up to be parents of equally vigorous offspring, will be an asset to our nation, and that it is a serious enough matter for those children that the future fathers may be crippled in health, without the contribution to their vitality of broken and delicate mothers. I am well aware my statements may cause some adverse criticism, but I would humbly say with Bacon that " hope must be the portion of all that resolve upon great enterprises," and the welfare of the child is a great enterprise. 29, Govan Drive, Alexandria, Dumbartonshire, Scotland. ABSTRACTS AND EXTRACTS. Under this heading are gathered thoughts from literature, both ancient and modern, which seek to provide information likely to be of assistance to students of child life and practical workers for child welfare. It is hoped that our readers will co-operate in making this section both suggestive and serviceable. EDUCATION. The President of the Board of Education has recently issued in convenient booklet form, and under the general title of "Educational Reform,” a collection of the chief speeches which he has delivered during the past year or so. The volume is published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford (price is. net). The brochure contains Mr. Fisher's great speeches on the Education Estimates, April 19, 1917, and the Education B.il, August 10, 1917, together with discourses delivered at Manchester, Liverpool, and Bradford, and before the Lancashire Teachers' Association and the Training College Association. There is also set forth in precise notes a summary of the chief features of the Education Bill, 1918, now before the country. All concerned for the progress of education in this country should procure this little book and make it their companion until the great truths, wise advice, and constructive proposals presented in Mr. Fisher's fine speeches are fully assimilated. The Minister for Education. provides a stimulating preface, from which we venture to quote the following: "Everybody who has a child knows that the future of his child depends upon the way in which he is brought up. Is he to be competent for the business of life or incompetent, a profitable member of the community or a parasite? Is he to be prudent or profitable, cultured or ignorant, brutal or refined, social or anti-social, a citizen or an anarchist? The answer to all these questions is to be found partly in descent, but far more largely in circumstances which, unlike the unalterable traits handed down in the blood, can be affected for better or for worse by education. Yet many people have a very limited faith in the value of education. They are prepared to believe that it is good for well-to-do people for the aristocracy of the human race upon whom the task of intellectual leadership is devolved. And even here they are not always very confident. They remember their own schooldays and say, Well, I was not taught much'; or they say, I had to unlearn a great deal'; or they think over their own stupid teachers and how dull it all was and how meaningless; or again, they reflect that schooling did not help them, so far as they can remember, to earn a single shilling, and so they think and talk against education, and, if they are very silly, write books against it. And this scepticism is deepened when they consider the case of the multitude. That rosy ploughman, drawing his solitary furrow against the background of a quiet English landscape -what a picture of patient honest content! Why perplex his brain with the sophistries of the school? Are not his teachers the sun, the stars, the clouds, and the good rich earth? And is not the racy natural good sense of the countryman, his instinct or intuition in the gentle crafts of the farm or woodland, more precious to him than all the libraries of the world? In all discussions between the sceptic and the man of faith such thoughts as these are apt to find expression." Mr. Fisher shows us that we must conceive of education as the art of drawing out of a man all that is best and most useful in him so that it may be employed to the advantage of the community, and of himself as a member of it."We must regard it not as bearing fruit in the science and art of earning a livelihood alone, but as yielding the science and art of living. It is the means by which the individual citizen may be trained to make the best use of his innate qualities and the means by which the State may be enabled to make the best use of its citizens. Spiritually conceived it is Plato's turning of the soul towards the light'; materially conceived it is Napoleon's 'open career to talent.' In any case it is of great democratic interest, for indeed a wise democratic Government is impossible without it. . . . Until the people of this country come to view education as the most fruitful of all benefits which age can confer upon youth, and not as one of those troublesome ailments of childhood which must be got through as quickly as possible, it is vain to expect any great improvement in the standard of our national schools." Mr. Fisher is alive to the many forces which are opposing educational progress, and among them not the least is material poverty: "The great drawback of poverty cannot be removed by an education law, though education, through the aids which it supplies to the formation of stable character, is bound in the long run to increase the stock of material wealth in a community. But so long as the grinding forms of poverty remain, people will continue to think that children are brought into the world to earn wages, and it will be a great object to get them out into the labour market as soon as may be. Thus, although we have a statutory school period which is supposed to last from the fifth to the fourteenth year, the claims of concurrent employment are so urgent, and the school time is so broken into by exemptions, that the work for the upper standards of our elementary schools has never yet been seriously organized all over the country. We hear of employer's time; we do not hear of children's time. It is assumed as part of an unalterable order of society that children, once released from the elementary school and hurried loose upon the labour market, have only the odds and ends of time which may be left over after the employer's claims are satisfied. We have so long accustomed ourselves to the fact of child labour that we have lost sight of the right principle of action. We cannot, of course, shut our eyes to the fact of poverty. We cannot ignore the very natural desire of poor parents to increase the scanty earnings of the household by the fruits of their children's labour. We must realize that many light economic services may be appropriately and happily performed by young people, that a little real work in the real world widens experience and often brightens the wits, and indeed many wellto-do children would be the better for a moderate daily dose of such an experience. But though the State cannot forbid wage-earning among young people, it should and must assign a value to learning as well as to earning. It has a right and a duty to affirm that it believes in education for the masses, and that by education it means not a sham and a make-believe, but something substantial, something which will leave a durable mark on mind and character, and that the claim of this education on the child is to be paramount." But it is not so much poverty in worldly goods that hinders progress as a poverty of spirit, a lack of vision, a dearth in desires. "Millions of our countrymen and countrywomen are making very little use of their lives for want of an agency which may direct and educate their sense of values during the whole period of youth." Mr. Fisher in his speeches shows that the province of popular education is to equip the men and women of this country for the tasks of citizenship. "All are called upon to live, many are called upon to die, for the community of which they form a part. That they should be rescued from the dumb helplessness of ignorance is, if not a precept of the eternal conscience, at least an elementary part of political prudence, to which the prospective enfranchisement of several million new voters, male and female, adds a singular emphasis. But the argument does not rest upon grounds of political prudence only; but upon the right of human beings to be considered as ends in themselves and to be entitled, so far as our imperfect social arrangements may permit, to know and enjoy all the best that life can offer in the sphere of knowledge, emotion, and hope." We earnestly advise our readers to procure a copy of this collection of the speeches of the President of the Board of Education, and give to the volume the fullest study which the vital problems of education demand. MISCELLANY. "Education: Its Spiritual Basis and Social Ideals," issued by the Teachers' Christian Union, 24, Great Russell Street, W.C.1 (price 2s. 6d. net), contains the at addresses delivered the Teachers' Christian Union Conference at the Central Y.M.C.A.,, London, January 1-4, 1918. The T.C.U., now associated with the Y.M.C.A. and the Y. W.C.A., has a threefold aim (1) To unite teachers of all types and denominations, whether men or women, who hold a spiritual conception of education to be fundamental, 66 : believing that "spirituality is the basis and foundation of human life rather than the apex or final attainment of it." (2) To seek through fellowship a clearer apprehension of the Christian faith. (3) To contribute through Christian education to the solution of social, international, and missionary problems. The minimum annual subscription is 1s. for members, and 2s. 6d. for associates. The Rev. W. Temple, the President, provides an introduction to the volume. Reports appear of the following addresses: "The Spiritual Basis of Education," by the Very Rev. T. B. Strong, D.D., Dean of Christchurch, Oxford; "The Spirit of Discipline from the Unit to the Mass," by J. Lewis Paton, High Master of Manchester Grammar School; "The Relation of Economic Law to Moral Law and Social Ideals," by Henry Clay, M.A.; Religious Training in Relation to the Home, the School, the State," by the Rev. A. A. David, D.D., Head Master of Rugby; "Education and Worship," by Albert Mansbridge, late General Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association; "The Young Their Claim to Life and Opportunity," by Mrs. Barton; "Chivalry in Problems of Sex: Our Common Responsibility," by Miss Maude Royden; "Citizenship in Schools and Afterwards," by Miss Cecile Matheson, late Warden to the Birmingham Women's Settlement; "Past and Present: The Place of History in National Education," by Alfred E. Zimmern. The report also appears of a stimulating address given to the Union by the President of the Board of Education, the Right Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, M.P. This little volume of notable addresses will bring mental stimulus and spiritual quickening to many educationists and teachers of religion. Its contents deserve the most serious consideration. We commend this timely and serviceable record of the transactions of a helpful conference to all concerned for the progress of spiritual forces in our educational and social life. "Fifty Years of American Education : A Sketch of the Progress of Education in the United States from 1867 to 1917," by Ernest Carroll Moore, published by Ginn and Co., 9, St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square, W.C. (price 3s. 6d. net), is a compact but comprehensive essay which educationists in this country will be wise to consider in these days of British educational reconstruction. The work is issued as an appropriate volume whereby the jubilee of the firm of Ginn and Co. may be worthily and serviceably commemorated. Mr. Moore's illuminating sketch concludes with the declaration that "at the end of fifty years of unparalled progress the world waits impatiently for the coming of peace to begin a yet greater cycle of educational renewing." We trust that the sacrificial waiting may not be unduly prolonged. This informing and suggestive summary is a fine record of nobly planned and wisely constructed educational enterprises; it is full of lessons which Britishers may take to heart. There is a short but helpful bibliography. Mr. "British Education After the War," by Frederick J. Gould, published by Watts and Co., 17, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C. (price is. 6d. net), is a work which stimulates thought, and while likely to arouse criticism from many quarters, will further constructive educational endeavours. All workers for reconstruction in thought and action regarding education as a vital and controlling force in the life of each developing citizen should study this book without prejudice. Gould has made many contributions to our overflowing literature relating to the principles and methods of education, but in none has he so effectively presented the case of education as a national service of the first importance. Education, it is claimed, must fit our coming citizens for the exercise of citizenship “with a decisive and clear vision for family responsibilities, civic and political duties, and intelligent relations towards the universal race fellowship." Mr. Gould urges that many administrative difficulties would disappear if we offered our hearts and reason more earnestly to the study of the realities of our national life and of child nature." The book is a fine plea for the principle of educational unification: "Service based on industry and inspired by history; and by service we understand the duties and efficiencies of the household, the village, the city, the country, the Federal Commonwealth.” Mr. Gould summarizes his conceptions thus: "The British people must shake its educational system clear alike of theological dead-weight and of anti-poetic 66 |