Among the educational opportunities which reformers desire to equalise, one of the chief is that of access to adequate libraries; and it is, they say, in this respect more perhaps than any other that the rich man has at present an unfair advantage over the poor.

It is virtually this precise advantage that will now be in possession of the boy who has thus far outstripped his classmate.

In his mastery of German he has a key to a vast literature--a key which the other has not.

He is now like a rich man with an illimitable library of his own, while the other by comparison is like a poor man who can get at no books at all.

Thus if opportunity, in its most fundamental form, were equalised for all boys, no matter how completely, the equality would be only momentary.