FREE MEALS [To he Editor of T ire SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Your Parliamentary Correspondent has this week somewhat surprised me by his remarks about the Labour resolution in favour of Free Meals for all children. He said " the sponsors marred their otherwise convincing arguments by their cavalier treatment of the problem of finance."
Mr. Shinwell's proposal was that at least one meal a day, in addition to milk, should be supplied to every child attending an elementary or secondary school. Now every school in the country is either an elementary or secondary school, and therefore this means a free meal every day for every boy and girl of school age in the kingdom.
Probably, however, Mr. Shinwell had forgotten, or possibly never knew, that the big boarding schools are secondary schools, that term being restricted in common parlance to day schools. Even with that limitation the proposal is absurd. The mass of the pupils in our town day schools are the children of parents of quite good means, business and professional men, tradesmen, and clerks, most of whom would laugh at the idea of a threepenny dinner for their boy or girl. It is curious, by the way, to find a Labour Member proposing to provide the children of capitalists with free meals.
Limit the proposal to children in elementary schools, and it still remains quite unnecessary. The great majority of the parents of these children are quite able to provide them with all the food they require, and scientific investigation shows that 89 per cent. of the children are adequately fed.
Mr. Shinwell's arguments are convincing only to those whose political creed is that what one must have all must have, that any discrimination is impossible, that no one under a capitalist system can be even decently well off, and that therefore even the very capitalists themselves need help in providing for their families.
The old Communist doctrine, and a very noble one, was " To each according to his needs " ; the modern Socialist principle seems to be " To everyone the same, whatever his
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