THE CHILDREN

A MOVEMENT is on foot headed by a committee of public-minded women, to prepare a monster petition from the children of the United States of America to the crowned heads of Europe, asking for an immediate armistice, the cessation of hostilities, and the submission of all the matters in issue to The Hague tribunal.

It is good. Its effect, of course, will be only sentimental; but war is only that.

It will be an application of right and helpful sentiment as an antidote to ulcerous and baleful sentiment.

There is no good reason why the conflict should not stop right now. All talk to the effect that "Germany must be crushed" or "England must be humbled" or "France must be reduced" is puerile. It amounts to a childish desire to whip the other fellow. The gratification of such a lust for mastery will cost Europe a staggering amount of lives and money.

The sober, thinking folks of Germany,

France, England, and Russia want only one thing, and that is-justice. And the idea that justice can be ground out of the battle-mill is on a level with duelling and trial by fireutterly medieval.

It will do no harm for the little child to say as much to their majesties. The royal magnificences and their bonehead counsellors may not listen; but history will listen-and record it upon her tablets.

Besides, why shouldn't the next generation have its say?

Just as the divorce inclined people seem to assume that the two adults in the case, with their clash of selfish interests, are alone to be considered, and forget the children, who, after all, are the real sufferers in domestic contention, so nations appear to think that in public matters it is only grown male adults whose interests are to be dealt with.

But for every torn man-body lying in the trenches by the Aisne, for every fine young fellow disembowelled by bayonet or decapitated by shrapnel in field or fortress, there is a woman at home whom no merciful death spares the horror, loneliness, and privations of widowhood; there are little ones whose father can no more guard and guide them,

whose right to a father's care and protection has been taken away by the blind stubbornness of statecraft.

And it is these children, this succeeding generation, that must pay the awful cost, must bow under outrageous taxes, and must bear the hideous heritage of hate and race-jealousy left by their forebears.

It is the children of 1870 that now are raging in the violent passions bequeathed them.

1914 is the child of 1870.

Why should not 1914 pause and heed the cry of 1930?

The eternal symphony of mankind is "Papa, Mamma, and the baby." Are two of these voices to be forever dumb?

Tuesday, October 6, 1914.

KING QUALITIES

It will do the world no good to get rid of kings unless it gets rid of the king qualities.

A king, a noble, an aristocrat, a high-born person, is an outward sign of an inward and spiritual disease.

The

That disease is the lust to dominate. desire to rule is the parent of all cruelty, tyranny, and social injustice.

What the world needs is that its bosom be cleansed of this rotten craving, which for centuries, exfoliating in magnificence, has cursed the race.

No man or nation can arrive at greatness -neither, indeed, can be able to see with any sort of unpurged vision what greatness is— until such man or nation learns humility; which is love of service and a distaste for command.

The cheapest, vulgarest thing in men is pride. It is the product of egoism. It is the fever of an inflamed ego. Whenever mani

fested it stinks in the nostrils of all truly cultured people.

"Pride goeth before a fall." For pride is an offense to the world, and sooner or later the world has its revenge.

Wherefore it produces in us a large pain. when we read the statements of Germans to the effect that Teutons ought naturally to boss the earth, because they know so much and are so active, efficient, scientific, and everything else supermen should be.

No less fat is our pain to hear the boast that England is mistress of the seas and regulator of the dry land.

Or that France is destined to rule and lead. Or that Russia and the Slav are some day to be cocks of the walk.

This pain intensifies to acuteness when we hear the big-stick Americans preach their gospel of 200 battleships and 1,000,000 armed men, so we may be ready to lick anybody at the drop of the hat, and thus become the grandest bully and cad among all nations.

It is the dreams of German dominance, English dominance, Slav dominance, that hover over Europe's slaughter.

It is this septic microbe of dominance that fills the world with brutal violence.

Why should any nation want to dominate?