ADOPTION.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR, —I have read with interest the letter signed " Inquirer," and imagine the writer to be one who has little or no sympathy with child-life or child-nature. I would commend him to read such a book as Little Lord Fauntleroy, as illustrating the change which the advent of a little child may bring into the childless home.
"Inquirer," admitting that the illegitimate child is un- wanted, would yet insist upon its being bound to its mother, perhaps preventing her from starting afresh in life, and grow- ing up to know the sad story of its birth, and this when there are many war-bereaved and childless homes where that un- wanted foundling might become a wanted child, and fill a gap which nothing else could fill.
Then as regards the children of married women, whose husbands are not the fathers. As a member of the S.S.F.A. Committee during the war, I heard, alas! of many such, but in every single case that has come to my knowledge the man on his discharge from the military has been willing to return to his wife and forgive her, provided the child he got away. Would " Inquirer " enforce the letter of the law, that he should keep and maintain that child that is not his, thereby destroying the happiness of his home, if there are to be found foster-parents willing and anxious to adopt?
But it is by no means only for illegitimate children that an Adoption Society should exist. In two recent cases here where adoption has been arranged the particulars were as follows. A professional gentleman and his wife died within a few weeks of each other, leaving four children, two boys and two girls, absolutely unprovided for, and relatives willing or able to take only one. The two girls and elder boy have been adopted by people in the same position in life as that of the deceased parents. The other case was actually arranged by the National Adoption Society, whose work " Inquirer " so severely criticizes, and is that of a boy, aged seven, whose father and mother both lost their lives at sea, and whose only relatives are in the Argentine. The boy was in a -private boarding-school in Hert- fordshire, and must have gone to the Union had adoption not been arranged.
The National Adoption Society, of 1 Baker Street, W., is doing a splendid work in placing homeless and orphan children in war-bereaved and childless homes, and is well worthy of any assistance that may be given by those who love and sympathize with child-life, and would not, as regards the innocent but illegitimate child, have it grow up to bear the shame of its parent's sin. Perhaps if " Inquirer " would take the trouble to investigate personally the Adoption Society's work, even he might be led to take a more sympathetic outlook on child-life in general and adoption in particular.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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