ual habits and manifestations. The Committee
cannot ignore the fact that the leading medical and psychological
authorities lay it down as an axiom that the power of self-control is at
its highest when the individual is physically active, well-nourished,
and in perfect bodily health, and that impaired control always
accompanies impaired nutrition, debility, and disease. It has been said,
with profound wisdom and insight, that ultimately and fundamentally
reproduction should be regarded as essentially "an exuberant phase of
nutrition"; and there is no escaping the wide implication of Schiller's
aphorism that "Love and Hunger rule the World."

In view of these considerations the Committee feel compelled to refer to
such serious handicaps to all-round health, control, and efficiency as
the prevalence of wrong feeding habits--_e.g._, giving children food
between meals and the insufficient provision of fresh fruit and
vegetables in the daily diet and the abuse of sweets. Other prominent
and avoidable handicaps, seriously affecting many children throughout
the Dominion, which ought to receive more serious attention are
insufficiency of sunlight and fresh air in the home and at school,
insufficient daily outing and exercise, lack of adequate provision in
the way of playgrounds and swimming-baths, and last, but not least, the
highly injurious practice of frequenting "picture-shows."

As the Committee are called on to deal specially with the problem of
increasing manifestations of sexual depravity they cannot pass by the
fact that in the course of the last twenty years the younger members of
the community have been spending a steadily increasing proportion of
their time, during the most impressionable period of life, in what are
liable to prove forcing-houses of sexual precocity and criminal
tendencies. There is every reason for regarding the habit of "going to
the pictures" without adequate restrictions as contributing seriously to
precocious sexuality, and also to weakening the powers of inhibition and
self-control in other directions--powers which are the distinctive
attributes of the higher human being.

Alongside these considerations, the bodily harm done to the young by
frequently spending their afternoons and evenings in hot, stuffy,
overcrowded halls shrinks into insignificance, though serious enough in
itself.

The Committee endorses the opinions expressed by Education authorities,
and by practically every organizati