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and evils of nervous strain, Dr. Constance Long remarked “ The poor live on sensations.’’ Anyone who has lived among them in central London will realise the truth of this statement. It is perhaps the working class above the destitution line who suffer most, and it seems impossible to ask the tired out and insufficiently educated mothers of such children to bring them up and educate them well in the teeth of conditions that would make the most resourceful of us tremble. The physical basis of their children s education is unsound at the start, and as their life continues there is little to cure or compensate for the evils of such a childhood. The vicious circle of a warped childhood, an early married struggle, and the burden of further children for whom there is no adequate provision must needs be broken at some point. The Council school, however well organised, provides an incomplete education. It is at best an escape from the life of the streets, a respite for the child from the difficulties of his home. It is inadequate for three reasons. It does not pretend to give individual treatment. The classes are too large, the teachers are too few, the curriculum is too rigid. Children are so diverse, how can they be expected to thrive on mass treatment ? Each one has' different potentialities, how can he discover or develop them without help ? Geniuses can and do, but the ordinary child early gives up the struggle to find anything of vital and absorbing interest in the school—he looks for it in the street. The Council schools in many cases make a gallant attempt to teach the rules of communal life, but they are hampered by the fictitious atmosphere in which they work. The schools are split up into rigid divisions of sex and age, so that no real communal life is possible ; yet what could be more fundamental ? The children of to-day are the citizens of to-morrow, and if they do not learn to live socially while they are little, how will they learn when they are grown men and women ? The Caldecott Community is not only a preparation for life, it is life itself in miniature, and the problems of life are faced and tackled as they arise. It is an endeavour to forestall and harmonise the coming radical changes in our social system. It is persistently maintained that labour and culture, things necessary and things beautiful, must go side by side ; that while it is true that in the sweat of his brow must man eat bread, it is equally true that man does not live by bread alone. The Caldecott Community stands for opportunity—not charity ; for opportunity and a way of escape for these children from the conditions which in many cases have proved too much for them. The Community endeavours to offer just such an opportunity—a school which gives all the conditions of a simple, wholesome, and hardworking life, but which at the same time keeps the children in close touch with their homes. For, in spite of their apparently insurmountable difficulties and dangers, these homes have given the children those elements of simplicity and independence which are so often lacking m the sheltered nurseries of the rich.