SCO THE SCHOOL BOARDS XV 



schools, I was greatly struck with the effect of 

 such training upon the poor little waifs and strays 

 of humanity, mostly picked out of the gutter, who 

 are being made into cleanly, healthy, and useful 

 members of society in that excellent institution. 



Whatever doubts people may entertain about 

 the efficacy of natural selection, there can be none 

 about artificial selection; and the breeder who 

 should attempt to make, or keep up, a fine stock 

 of pigs, or sheep, under the conditions to which 

 the children of the poor are exposed, would be the 

 laughing-stock even of the bucolic mind. Parlia- 

 ment has already done something in this direction 

 by declining to be an accomplice in the asphyxiation 

 of school children. It refuses to make any grant 

 to a school in which the cubical contents of the 

 school-room are inadequate to allow of proper 

 respiration. I should like to see it make another 

 step in the same direction, and either refuse to 

 give a grant to a school in which physical training 

 is not a part of the programme, or, at any rate, 

 offer to pay upon such training. If something of 

 the kind is not done, the English physique, which 

 has been, and is still, on the whole, a grand one, 

 will become as extinct as the dodo in the great 

 towns. 



And then the moral and intellectual effect of drill, 

 as an introduction to, and aid of, all other sorts of 

 training, must not be overlooked. If you want to 

 break in a colt, surely the first thing to do is to 



