olunteer and
private social work, became the resource of a government bent on
keeping men "fit to fight," and on preserving young women in the
vicinity of the camps both from giving and receiving harmful
influences. Since then, more than ever, such agencies for moral
protection have become official in civic life and have the endorsement
and the aid of government. It is one new feature of all modern
protective work that women are employed as members of the police, as
matrons in public places supported by tax, and indeed in places of
commercial recreation, as judges of special courts where parole and
methods of suspended sentence are used, and in all places where boys
and girls are exposed to danger and to temptation. Thus the home
influence is spreading out toward the work-place and the
play-centre--truly a retranslation of family service in terms of the
public life.

=The Children's Bureau.=--Our government at Washington used to be
limited in its function to those political services which no state
organization could accomplish by itself, but now the Federal
departments are busily at work setting standards, if only through
authentic information and suggestion, which aim to raise the average
life in all directions, economic and social. The Children's Bureau is
preeminently a standardizing body, although with no power to issue or
enforce decrees. The Bureaus which have to do with foods and animal
life and farm management are setting higher and higher levels of
attainment for the common people in their home life and in their
vocational work. There is a strong movement to enlarge the educational
influence at the very heart of our national government with a Cabinet
Head to set a high standard of attainment in both the art, the
science, and the administration of education as well as to aid in
equalizing educational opportunity. Moreover, there is a strong
tendency, seen most recently and vividly in the provisions of the
Maternity Aid Bill, for all social efforts to ask and to be granted
Federal financial aid on the fifty-fifty plan. There is not a
consensus of opinion among the thoughtful as to the wisdom of thus
placing upon the general government the burden of social schemes upon
which a minority of the people, be that minority large or small, are
alone agreed. The force of persuasion may secure national legislation
in advance of that which many local communities already have or are
seeking to secure. The increase of natio