Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/51

 of a dozen different varieties stand ready to assume the burdens of washing it, dosing it with purges, and measuring out its victuals. Milk is supplied free—and not simply common cow's milk, but cow's milk modified according to the subtlest formulæ of eminent pediatricians. Ice is thrown in as a matter of course. Medicines are free at the neighbourhood dispensary. If the mother, recovering her figure, wishes to go shopping, she may park her baby at a crèche, and, on the plea that she is employed as a charwoman, leave it there all day. Once it can toddle the kindergarten yawns for it, and in holiday time the public playground, each officered by learned experts. The public school follows, and with it a host of new benefits. Dentists are in attendance to plug and pull the youngster's teeth at the public charge. Oculists fit it with horn-rimmed spectacles. It is deloused. Free lunches sustain it. Its books cost nothing. It is taught not only the three R's, but also raffia-work, bookkeeping, basketball, salesmanship, the new dances, and parliamentary law. It learns the causes of the late war and the fallacies of Socialism.

The rest you know as well as I do. The