During the past ten days, a very remarkable movement has
taken place among the schoolchildren of several large towns in England and Scotland. At Dundee, Edinburgh, Darlington, Middlesbrough, West Hartlepool, Cardiff, Jarrow, Hackney, Bermondsey, Kennington, and Plumstead, and in several other places, the children have struck, caricaturing all the machinery for bringing out the waverers by forcible persua- sion, and for enlisting public sympathy by processions, adopted by their elders. Their demands have a delicious naivetg about them. The abolition of the cane and of home-lessons, and more playtime—in one case, less than four hours of study a day is claimed—are declared by the children to be their irreducible minimum. In a few instances in Scotland, free education is also demanded in all the standards,—it has lately been partially granted in most schools across the Border. Of course, in the end the children are bound to lose, though possibly the abuse of caning, which undoubtedly sometimes exists, will be remedied. The most remarkable thing about the move- ment is that it began as a kind of game in the East End, and then, in some mysterious way, suddenly appeared, not as play but as a reality, in matter-of-fact Scotland. The experts in the strange lore which relates to "passing the word" in semi-savage countries, and to the phenomenon which the Greeks called Pheme, have a splendid chance to examine their subject at first-hand.
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