I am all for education, but not at the expense of freedom and family life. When the House of Commons decrees that no child is to live with its father and mother on board a canal boat, it strikes a blow against marriage, and the family, and liberty, which is almost worthy of Moscow. Nor would such a measure be suggested, but for the insufficiency of our educational experts, whose indolence suggests to them that it is an easier job to destroy a home than to make a special kind of school to support a special kind of family. The modern legislator is never so happy as when he is interfering with domestic peace, or hindering a man at his work; and the Government Aunties all know, far better than mere mothers, how children should be fed, clothed and taught. I have no doubt that there are men in the Education Department, like Edward Holmes, the late chief inspector of education, who if given a free hand to-morrow, could devise an excellent scheme for providing the canal boat children with all the education they want, and saving them from many weary hours of scholastic slavery in an unwholesome atmosphere. To do this would necessitate tearing up a lot of futile regulations and obtaining a sum of money from a niggardly Treasury. Not so much, of course, as the Exchequer would spend on a useless airship, or some pictures of bananas to please Empire advertisers, but merely a few thousands for such sanitary buildings and sensible teachers as the scheme would need.