Editorial 



377 



century have without question obtained a large measure of 

 victory. Much as all premature announcements of drug cures 

 are to be deprecated, it is to be admitted that it is in that 

 direction that hope chiefly lies. As to the nature of the 

 disease and its prevention, it is to be feared that we know 

 almost as much as we are likely to know. 



All Biologists who feel enthusiasm for the practical applica- 

 tion of their knowledge will rejoice in the recent decision of 

 our Legislature to allow school children, when necessitous, to 

 be fed at public cost. The measure, as passed, is not a very 

 generous one, but it is a step in the right direction, and others 

 will certainly follow. The lesson which above all the study of 

 life-processes chiefly impresses is that results are not to be 

 expected without adequate causes, and, next, that if causes 

 are in existence the effects will to a certainty follow. To 

 expect that a half-starved child will grow into a robust man, 

 or that an inadequately nourished brain will successfully store 

 up knowledge, is a violence to all that our zoological studies 

 teach us, to say nothing of common- sense. 



What has been the influence to which, in the main, we 

 must attribute the development of the Chimpanzee or the 

 Orang (which shall we take ?) onward to a Mr. Birrell or a 

 Sir H. Campbell Bannerman ? The more deeply we look 

 into the matter the more clearly shall we realise that the 

 most influential of all the environments of humanity is 

 the food which is supplied in early life. It was fitting, then, 

 that our educationists and our progressives should pass into 

 law a Food Bill for the benefit of the children of the future. 



A leading newspaper commenting— in, it is to be feared, a 

 sarcastic mood — on a resolution recently passed at a Trades 

 Union Congress, wrote : " Briefly it is settled that the State 

 should be asked to undertake the maintenance of school 

 children. It is to teach them, feed them, amuse them, doctor 

 them, and finally to extend the scholarship system so that it 

 shall be possible for ' all children to be full-time day pupils 



