Window Dressing.
There is a good deal in the Report which we may look on as a kind of "window dressing" intended to reassure the more timid. The Registrar is to be provided with case-papers "of the most approved pattern." References to "self-respect, personal responsibility, and the integrity of family life," are scattered about as it were with a pepper-pot. For example, the Local Authority is to "stimulate parental responsibility, self-control, and self-help" (pp. 794-5), and how? By the provision of free milk at the municipal depot where the "baby is to be brought to be weighed, the mother's interest not allowed to slacken, praise and approval are to be given when the baby continues well, blame and warning if it sickens." By these means "self-respect, power of will, and personal responsibility," are to be evoked. Similarly in another place the same qualities are to be manufactured by the proposed training establishments. We may differ in our views as to what the result will be in this respect, but we shall all agree that the Socialist writers have in the past given but little prominence to these qualities and conditions. Indeed Socialists of a certain school are altogether inimical at heart to the "integrity of family life." We are entitled, therefore, to look with some suspicion upon this new-born solicitude, especially when it comes from the Fabians, who are generally reputed to be the Jesuits of their creed. The following definition of the "whole duty" of a Fabian is from the pen of a prominent Fabian in the early days of that Society:—"There should be only one absorbing principle in a Fabian's life—the attainment of Social Democracy, and all means and methods to attain that end are laudable. Study to be as morally immoral as possible. To be a
