that they are not the inevitable concomitants of official regulations.  Anything which tends to make teachers’ lives more narrow, is opposed to the cause of education.  This truth should be instilled into all official bosoms.  Wherever the State or the local authority intervenes, wherever public money has been granted, there regular inspection obviously becomes inevitable, but the multiplication of inspectors, each representing a different authority, is not necessary or sensible.  At present, in all grant-aided institutions, whatever their status, inspectors do not cease from troubling, and teachers as well as administrative officers, though weary, find no rest.[1] This is as detrimental to the pupil as to the teacher, for it lowers the intellectual standard by substituting form for matter and the letter for the spirit.  Thus the inspector of an art-school who enquires only about what are officially termed “student-hours,” and not at all about the work therein accomplished, does not make for artistic efficiency either in teacher or taught.  Yet this instance is of very recent occurrence, and there are countless parallel cases.  No wonder the Universities demand freedom from State control; no wonder Training Colleges and subsidised secondary as well as elementary schools groan under its tender mercies.  The present forms taken by this control are mostly obnoxious to all practical educationists.  They arise from lack of trust in the teaching profession on the part of administrators—­a mistrust which it is of primary importance to allay by increased efficiency, independence, and organisation.  Nationalisation of the schools is necessary, if a real highway of education is to be established:  it must be obtained without irritating conditions which make freedom, experiment, and progress too often impossible.  The task before the teaching profession is to retain full scope for initiative and experiment, whilst working loyally under a public body.  This should be specially the work of the socialist teacher, while the socialist administrator and legislator must see that their side of the work leaves full room for individuality.

In the following section it is obviously impossible adequately to consider all branches of the teaching profession, and it has therefore been thought the wisest course to select the leading varieties of work in which women teachers are engaged and to treat them in some detail.  The writers of the various articles express their own points of view, gained by practical first-hand experience of the work they describe.  Allowance must, perhaps, in some cases be made for personal enthusiasm, or for the depression that arises from thwarted efforts and unfulfilled ideals.  At any rate no attempt has been made to co-ordinate the papers or to give them any particular tendency.  As a result, certain deductions may be made with some confidence.  Women teachers of experience are convinced of the manifold attractions of their profession, and at the same time are alive to its disadvantages as well as to its possibilities.  Alike in University, secondary school, and elementary school there is the joy of service, and the power to train,