TOYS 219 



were in evidence last winter. We shall of course im- 

 prove on this, have already improved on it. But so 

 far as the toys requiring wood are concerned, and their 

 number is legion, we have not got the wood in the 

 country and you cannot expect to get the cheap toys 

 made in afforested countries if you have first to import 

 your wood to make them and pay the cost of importa- 

 tion. 



We all know how extraordinarily critical the child is 

 in all that pertains, I was going to say, to its welfare, 

 but I will limit myself to one branch of its life only, 

 its amusements. Very early in life the child com- 

 mences to form its own opinions on this subject and 

 any departures from what in its own mind it considers 

 to be the normal state of affairs are met by criticism 

 which we have all probably at one time or another 

 found it extremely difficult to explain away. Many of us 

 must, I think, have had some uncomfortable moments 

 to face over this matter of the children's toys since the 

 outbreak of war. It was but one of the numerous 

 directions in which we depended entirely on the 

 foreigner to provide our requirements. And more 

 especially was this the case with the enormous depart- 

 ment of the cheaper toys which after all are all that 

 the greater number of children of this country have 

 any acquaintance with. It is difficult to picture the 

 amount of sorrow, small sufferings if you will, but 

 looming very large in the childish mind, which must 

 have been experienced by the childhood of the nation 

 since the well-known, eagerly welcomed, and, for their 

 price, exquisitely made foreign toys failed us with the 

 outbreak of war. Women naturally, ever in the fore- 



