6 This was written in 1915.
7 This would be as true under a syndicalist regime as it is at present.
1 These changes, which are to be desired on their own account, not only in order to prevent war, will be discussed in later lectures.
2 What is said on this subject in the present lecture is only preliminary, since the subsequent lectures all deal with some aspect of the same problem.
1 Booth’s “Life and Labour of the People,” vol. iii.
1 As regards the education of young children, Madame Montessori’s methods seem to me full of wisdom.
2 We have reached lately a depth even lower than the distortion of the minds of children. Children are to be organized so as to become the innocent tools for hate and cruelty to be implanted through parental affection. For the way of doing this see the Teacher’s World, September 5, 1917. On a given day every boy and girl in school is to write a letter to a friend on active service. “Their letters must give their hearers a hearty greeting; a real firm hand-shake. The letters must not just say, ‘How do you do?’ but ‘You are winning. We are proud of you. We’ll see it through with you. Everybody is helping,’ and so forth.” “Above all, the letters must be natural. … The older children should write their letters entirely by themselves. The younger ones should have as little help as possible. Very young ones might just send a cheery line or two from the teacher’s copy on the blackboard.”
3 What Madame Montessori has achieved in the way of minimizing obedience and discipline with advantage to education is almost miraculous.
1 There was a provision for suits in forma pauperis, but for various reasons this provision was nearly useless; a new and somewhat better provision has recently been made, but is still very far from satisfactory.
2 The following letter (New Statesman, December 4th, 1915) illustrates the nature of his activities:—
Divorce and War. To the Editor of the “New Statesman.”
Sir,—The following episodes may be of interest to your readers. Under the new facilities for divorce offered to the London poor, a poor woman recently obtained a decree nisi for divorce against her husband, who had often covered her body with bruises, infected her with a dangerous disease, and committed bigamy. By this bigamous marriage the husband had ten illegitimate children. In order to prevent this decree being made absolute, the Treasury spent at least ?200 of the taxes in briefing a leading counsel and an eminent junior counsel and in bringing about ten witnesses from a city a hundred miles away to prove that this woman had committed casual acts of adultery in 1895 and 1898. The net result is that this woman will probably be forced by destitution into further adultery, and that the husband will be able to treat his mistress exactly as he treated his wife, with impunity, so far as disease is concerned. In nearly every other civilized country the marriage would have been dissolved, the children could have been legitimated by subsequent marriage, and the lawyers employed by the Treasury would not have earned the large fees they did from the community for an achievement which seems to most other lawyers thoroughly anti-social in its effects. If any lawyers really feel that society is benefited by this sort of litigation, why cannot they give their services for nothing, like the lawyers who assisted the wife? If we are to practise economy in war-time, why cannot the King’s Proctor be satisfied with a junior counsel only? The fact remains that many persons situated like the husband and wife in question prefer to avoid having illegitimate children, and the birth-rate accordingly suffers.
“The other episode is this. A divorce was obtained by Mr. A. against Mrs. A. and Mr. B. Mr. B. was married and Mrs. B., on hearing of the divorce proceedings, obtained a decree nisi against Mr. B. Mr. B. is at any moment liable to be called to the Front, but Mrs. B. has for some months declined to make the decree nisi absolute, and this prevents him marrying Mrs. A., as he feels in honour bound to do. Yet the law allows any petitioner, male or female, to obtain a decree nisi and to refrain from making it absolute for motives which are probably discreditable. The Divorce Law Commissioners strongly condemned this state of things, and the hardship in question is immensely aggravated in war-time, just as the war has given rise to many cases of bigamy owing to the chivalrous desire of our soldiers to obtain for the de facto wife and family the separation allowance of the State. The legal wife is often
