as essentially the motive of the boy who builds a
boat.

Ah! but we have Industrial Schools for bad boys!

I spent an evening with an Industrial School boy of thirteen not long
ago. It was an unlovely tale he told me of his life in school. I got
the impression of a building half-prison, half-barracks. No one was
allowed to go out unless to football matches when the school team was
playing. Punishment was stern and frequent.

"One old guy, 'e sends you to the boss for punishment and says you gave
'im an insubordinate look, and you ain't allowed to deny wot 'e says."

"Look here, Jim," I said, "suppose I took you to a free school
to-morrow, a school where you could do what you liked, what's the first
thing you would do?"

A wild look came into his eyes.

"I'd lay out the blarsted staff," he said tensely.

"But," I laughed, "what would be the point of laying me out if I gave
you freedom? What have you got against _me_?"

"Oh," he said, "I thought you meant if I got freedom in the Industrial
School!"

That school is condemned; if a school produces one boy who hates and
fears its teachers, it is a bad school.

I think of the other way, the Homer Lane way.

Homer Lane was superintendent of the little Commonwealth in Dorset. He
attended the juvenile courts and begged the magistrates to hand over to
him the worst cases they had. He took the children down to Dorset and
gave them freedom. He refused to lay down any laws, and naturally the
beginning of the Commonwealth was chaos. Lane joined in the
anti-social behaviour; he became one of the gang. When the citizens
thought that their best way of expressing themselves was to smash
windows, Lane helped them to smash them. His marvellous psychological
insight will best be illustrated by the story of Jabez.

Jabez was a thoroughly bad character; he had been thief and highwayman,
a bully who could fight with science. He came to the Commonwealth and
was astonished. He found boys and girls working hard all day, and
making their own laws at their citizen meetings at night. Jabez could
not understand it, and not understanding he felt hostile.

The citizens lived in cottages, and one night Lane went over to the
cottage in which Jabez lived. They were having tea, and Lane sat down
beside Jabez.

"What are you always grousing about, Jabez?" he asked. "Don't you like
the Commonwealth?"

"No," said Jabez viciously.

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's too respe