Hard though it sounds to say it, there can be
no doubt that, so far as the evacuation of school children is concerned, parents are the curse. I see from one of Monday's papers that on Sunday a number of parents, taking advantage of the fine weather, visited their children in a south-country recep- tion area. The children got suddenly homesick, clamoured to be taken home, and in many cases were. It accords entirely with my own observation in another area. There, at a certain hostel, Sunday was a visiting day. No children, I think, were actually withdrawn in this case, but the whole place was completely demoralised, and the cumulative and satisfactory effects of past weeks of discipline suddenly dis- pelled. It is, of course, perfectly natural and right that parents should want to visit their children. But its conse- quences are too frequently all wrong.
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