s such places always are in Germany. When
the children arrive in the morning at half-past seven they have a
first breakfast of _Griesbrei_. At ten o'clock they have rolls and
butter. Their dinner consists of one solid dish. The day we were there
it had been pork and cabbage, a combination Germans give more
willingly to delicate children than we should; the next day it was to
be _Nudelsuppe_ and beef. At four o'clock they have bread and milk,
and just before they go home a supper like their early breakfast of
milk-soup, and bread. 260 litres of milk are used every day, 50 to 60
lbs. of meat, 2 cwts. potatoes, 30 big rye loaves, 280 rolls, and when
spinach, for instance, is given, 80 lbs. of spinach. We asked whether
the children paid, and were told that those who could afford it paid
from 25 to 45 pf. a day. The school is kept open throughout the summer
holidays, but no work is done then, and two-thirds of the teachers are
away. Although the children are at play for the greater part of the
day in term time, and all day in the holidays, the headmaster told us
that they gave no trouble. There was not a dirty or untidy child to be
seen, nor one with rough manners. They are allowed to play in the
light, sandy soil of the forest, much as English children play at the
seaside, and we saw the beginning of an elaborate chain of fortresses
defended by toy guns and decorated with flowers. We heard a lesson in
mental arithmetic given in one of the class-rooms, the boys sitting on
one side of the room and the girls on the other; and we found that
these young sickly children were admirably taught and well advanced
for their age. To be a teacher in one of these open-air schools is
hard work, because the strain is never wholly relaxed. All day long,
and a German day is very long, the children must be watched and
guarded, sheltered from changes in the weather and prevented from
over-tiring themselves. Many of them come from poor cramped homes, and
to spend the whole summer in the forest more at play than at work
makes them most happy. I met Germans who did not approve of the
_Waldschule_ who considered it a fantastic extravagant experiment, too
heavy for the rate-payers to bear. This is a side of the question that
the rate-payers must settle for themselves; but there is no doubt
about the results of the venture on the children sent to school in the
forest. They get a training that must shape their whole future, moral
and physical, a train