PREFACE 



THE essay which occupies the following pages is something 

 more than an academic dissertation ; it is, within its elected 

 narrow limits, a real contribution to a very pressing problem. 

 We are all of us anxious to solve, both theoretically 'and 

 practically, the problem of the man that fell among thieves 

 and was left, only half alive, i.e. only half a man, by the 

 roadside ; but while the spirit of the Good Samaritan is 

 increasingly with us, and to that extent benedictions multiply 

 on those who help and, to some extent, upon those who receive 

 help, we are all of us also increasingly aware that it is not 

 enough to take a stricken man to a shelter, nor even to 

 produce the financial equivalents for his restoration. We 

 want to be assured that he will not fall among thieves a 

 second time, in view of the fact that his journey must be 

 continued on the same road ; and in order to satisfy ourselves 

 on that point, we have to identify and, if possible, to catch 

 the thieves. Thus the problem of life is expanded ; it began 

 with Man t know thyself; it was re-stated as Man, know thy 

 neighbour : and it is now becoming a questionjof the neighbour's 

 ancestry and the neighbour's environment. More than this, 

 the problem has an added pathos for those who love their 

 kind, in that the man by the wayside turns out to be a child, 

 or, at all events, as in the present investigation, an inter- 

 mediary between child and man. It might have been imagined 

 that in a properly ordered world children would at least have 

 been secure ; on the contrary, they appear to be least secure ; 

 and it is darkly hinted by the Eugenists that the child's own 

 parents are the robbers, and that they have pauperised the 



280211 



