14 JANUARY 1922, Page 3

What we want to tell our readers now is that

the effect of this very touching letter has been astonishing. We have already received some ninety answers and they still come. We have forwarded many of them to the writer of the letter in India. It is seldom in our experience that a purely private appeal has evoked such instantaneous, genuine and warmly-worded responses. It seems to us to prove that some kind of organiza- tion is needed to keep parents, who have to pass many years in India, in touch with suitable families at home to whom their children can go in the holidays. The matter is obviously well worth thinking about. The mother's thoughts, as our correspondent shows, are, more euo, entirely with her children, for she is haunted by the thought that they may have found their way into a " good Christian home " ; but the thoughts of readers of her letter, we fancy, must have turned quite as much on the sufferings of the mother herself, who is, perhaps, the most to be pitied of all the parties to the transaction.