e can be no doubt that in these critical times, when
the life of the best and bravest and strongest is so cheap, no duty is
more important than the cherishing of infancy.

At a _Creche_ in Notting Hill I watched, the other day, some of this
cherishing in progress, and it was a pleasant and stimulating sight.
The institution was in existence in a small way before the War, but it
has recently been enlarged and made scientific, to meet the greater
needs which the War has set up, and it is now able to act as foster
mother to seventy mites, from the age of one month to four years,
whose real mothers are for the most part engaged in war work. That is
a good piece of citizenship, is it not? And to watch it in being is an
education in those wonderful things to the eye of man--the solicitude
and patience and capability of woman. The noise alone, whether of
joy or of transitory grief, would drive most men frantic; but these
devoted souls, knowing that it is all part of the game, proceed with
an unearthly composure through it all--undressing their charges,
dressing them, washing them, feeding them, beguiling them; in a word,
tending them, from morning till evening.

The children begin to arrive, brought either by their mothers, their
"Little Mothers" (I mean sisters) or their brothers, between 8 and
9--some in arms and some in perambulators and some in go-carts; and
then they are immediately divested of their home clothes, popped
into warm baths three or four at a time, and dressed in the clothes
belonging to the _Creche_. For the rest of the day they wear these
clothes and sleep, eat, play and, when it amuses them more to do so,
cry, until the time comes to be put back into their own garments
and be taken away. By some strange instinct their relations, I am
informed, know them again, and very few mistakes occur; and so
gradually, in the neighbourhood of seven o'clock, peace descends on
this corner of Notting Hill once more.

The place is sheer Lilliputia: for everything is on a reduced scale.
Scores of little beds round the walls, with little pillows and little
coverlets; scores of little chairs; a long table so low that it seems
to be the footstool of a giant's wife, with little benches beside
it for their little meals. In the centre of the room are two little
pounds, with railings so close together as not to be crawled through,
where the more adventurous ones can be kept out of mischief in the
company of woolly toys; and out