depends more on the sense of responsibility in the parents and of duty in the children, than on palatial school-houses and elaborate programme of studies.  This sense of duty and the feeling of responsibility are not a necessary consequence of state schools.  On the contrary they are more liable to be found in independent institutions.  For, as we have seen, when the State substitutes itself for the family, the first consequence is the unchallenged yield of parental rights.

Those who would make an excursion into history and compare our modern educational systems with those of the past will find illuminating points of comparison and instructive conclusions.  We would advise them to take Dr. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., Litt.D., as guide.  His books:  “Education, how Old the New”—­“The Thirteenth Century”—­will prove most interesting reading.

Already a reactionary policy is being enacted in several countries where for years the State-School was the only one to share in the public treasury.  In Holland, the Parliament of June, 1920, by a vote of 72 against 3, passed a new school-law which recognizes and subsidizes all separate primary, high and normal schools.  In Italy, the Minister of Education, Benedetto Croce, in a speech on the “reorganization of education,” stated publicly that the neutral school was theoretically absurd and practically impossible.  In Spain,[3] by a Bill of May, 1919, the State universities have passed out of the hands of the Government.  France, Portugal, Argentine Republic are fighting for the same freedom.  In Poland’s new charter of liberties, granted by the Treaty of Versailles, the rights of the minority in school matters are guaranteed.  Our Canadian representatives signed this document.  We were granting then to the new Republic a sacred right which we still refuse to our own at home, in the Province of Manitoba!

VII.—­A Religious Reason

The creation of the state-school, necessarily undenominational in character, has made the “separate school” an absolute necessity.  If religion has any meaning in life this reason of our separation should be most convincing.

In education one cannot separate the utilitarian side,—­the fitting of the child for the struggle of life,—­from its main purpose,—­the development of moral character.  The moral aspect alone gives to human life its true character, its real value.  As there is no morality without religion, the system of education that would debar this essential feature falls short of its full meaning.  With this principle in view any fair-minded man will understand how true Christian parents demand a school where their children will receive religious education.  They are in conscience bound to exact for their offspring such education, and, where the State refuses them their own money to support their “separate schools” they willingly penalize themselves to give them this benefit.  The child’s eternal welfare is not to be sacrificed to a school system that has not even accomplished the purpose for which it was established.  For, as we shall see, a neutral school is a practical impossibility.