Christ's tomb and holy places to their rightful possessors. Witnesses declared that the children were inspired by God or had come together in answer to messages received from angels.

No record exists that the children ever reached Palestine. A number of them, arriving at Genoa, broke up into groups and tried to embark at different points. One shipowner tried to monopolize the passage of the children and other practical spirits of the time did their best to turn the enthusiasm and needs of the children into money for their own pockets. According to one report, seven hundred were shipwrecked on an island in the Aegean. All seem to have become at last discouraged. "Many perished," we read, "of hardships, hunger and thirst in the forests and waste places; many were despoiled by the Lombards, many were sold into slavery in divers places." 1

It was only then that the scales fell from men's eyes. Popular feeling underwent a quick revulsion. Such of the youthful adventurers as reached home were described as coming back in humiliation and disgrace; young girls who had gone forth as virgins returned in shame. Divine inspiration was no longer cited as the cause of the uprising. With failure came the explanation that the whole movement was "the work of the devil." We must remember that child life was then understood even less perfectly than now and that children were apt to be regarded with superstition or treated with neglect. What remorse was felt by the adults who had encouraged the children is not recorded, though there is evidence that some intelligent observers felt keenly the loss both to the young folk and their families. At any rate, the crusades did no good to the cause that called them forth and great harm to the children who took part in them. The whole enterprise seems clearly to have been one of those fruitless sacrifices of childhood to a passionate cause that only an age of ignorance or fervor can produce.

Today we are in danger of repeating this sacrifice. To be sure, we are not sending child crusaders against a far enemy. But nations are fighting nations as peoples, not as armies, and the children are not exempt. We are confronted with proposals in many quarters which would strip children of some of the protections that civilization has slowly thrown about them. In the first months of war emergency measures have been advocated which would do nothing less than undermine their health, stunt their growth, interfere with their education, make them laborers before their time and set them on the paths of wrong conduct. For all of this we have neither superstition nor ignorance as our

excuse.

Child life is not an unopened book to us. We know something of both its nature and its needs. It is no longer regarded as a span of years to be bridged as chance directs. It is a period of growth and of delicately adjusted training. Child life calls for nourishment, for pure milk, clean homes and health in mothers. It demands extraordinary protection against disease at a time when our mode of living puts new strains upon young bodies. These bodies need to be made supple and hardy, fit vessels for courage and independence. Childhood is sensitive also and quick to respond; a mere word may change its outlook on life. It needs, therefore, education and wise leadership. It requires a complex equipment of material objects: schools, devices for play, laboratories, gymnasiums, whatever will make for physical strength and mental alertness. To control and direct this equipment it needs a

(1) The Children's Crusades, by D. C. Munro, Am. Hist. Review, Vol. 19, pages 522-23.

staff from the older generation: men and women skilled in childhood's ways, physicians and nurses who have studied child hygiene, teachers, play leaders, persons fitted to build up moral strength. It needs, too, an enriching study of the arts, of music, of coloring and of form. To obtain all these is a task as essential as it is difficult, for children must face life whole when they grow up and their ability to do so depends primarily upon the preparatory years.

The evils that come from depriving children of these things are irreparable. Increased infant mortality; anæmic and undernourished youth; a generation of spindlings, illiterates and poor producers; juvenile and adult delinquents; bad parentage for the coming generation-these are some of the effects of neglect and exploitation. neglect and exploitation. Such effects cut at the root of democratic life. The first requisites of success in self-government are sound physique and trained intelligence. Without them, we cannot progress or help the rest of the world toward democracy. Nor can we hope readily to repair our neglect of these things, for once denied they show their evil. fruitage only when it is too late to make amends.

England is learning this lesson well in the present war. Like us, her military strength had to be made available quickly. In the first rush, the children were forgotten. Wasted human stock, grim economy, the policy of making every institution and service bear the burden alike, have in three swift years brought their recoil. Today the nation is concerned as never before in the preparation of her future citizens. Provision for the physical care of mothers and infants has increased, the government has asked for the largest addition to its educational budget ever voted, and committees are studying the training of children from a dozen viewpoints. An official recommendation has just been made for a compulsory national system of education for all children between five and eighteen years of age.

English experience is beginning to be duplicated in this country. We had been less than three months in the war when some of us were in full stampede against childhood. When Dr. Baker, chief of the division of child hygiene of the New York Department of Health, tried recently to interest an audience of women in the care of children, she was met with the question, "Is this meeting called to discuss the feeding of children or preparations for war?" "What can we do for our country?" asked another woman. "I want to nurse wounded soldiers," said a third.

No one would propose letting wounded soldiers go without nursing, but that need not preclude an intelligent distribution of our health resources. Already nurses' associations, social settlements and others are expressing concern over the undiscriminating shift of personnel from civil to military duties. Nurses and doctors skilled in children's diseases are leaving their practice for what seems to them a more patriotic or adventurous service elsewhere. Similarly, an unconsidered diversion of boy club leaders, educators and play leaders is likely to take place.

Throughout the spring legislatures and other official bodies. waived restrictions and lowered standards affecting the health, education and labor of women and children in a number of states. Governors have been given arbitrary power to set aside safeguards, newly created commissions have been armed with authority to do anything that "public safety" demands, and commissioners of education, state boards of education and local education authorities have themselves in some instances led in shortening school terms and arranging for children of tender age to leave school for farm and factory work.

war years.

WH

It is to serve these efforts that the present articles are written. For ultimate solutions and measures of improvement the good sense and resourcefulness of the American people will have to answer. Only a reportorial service is attempted here: to set forth something of what foreign experience may have ready for our hands, to discover pitfalls and needs at home, and to gather together from various American communities and social workers what they have to offer for the service of all, in the way of methods by which we can preserve without loss of present national efficiency our care of the coming generation.

HEN a French writer asked, nine months after the beginning of hostilities, "Where is the school?" he was compelled to answer: "It is in a store, in a gymnasium, in a labor hall, in the hall of the Conseil Général, in the crypt of a church, in a courthouse, in a museum, in a public library."

This picture of school buildings given over to barracks and hospitals, while children hunt classroom space in whatever outof-the-way spot they can find it, is, of course, not so likely to be seen in this country as in those nearer the conflict. Nevertheless, there are interferences with education that we shall not readily escape. Some of these have already overtaken us. A number of cities have listened to the plea that school need not keep in war time, and some state legislatures have vied with each other in releasing boys and girls from school discipline for war time work.

The war was not five weeks old when Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont gave some official or commission the power to suspend laws during war time. In Connecticut and New Hampshire it is the governor who was given power to set aside labor laws if requested by the Council of National Defense. Vermont gave its commissioner of industries, acting with the approval of the governor, power to suspend the law regulating hours of labor of women and children.

Other states were not slow to follow. Massachusetts created a commission of five persons with power to suspend any law licensing or regulating labor or the employment of labor, or any law affecting in any manner the conditions of labor. This power can be exercised only upon the application of an employer who declares that a law of the sort described interferes with work that he is doing and that it is required by an emergency arising out of the war. The law applies, moreover, only for the duration of the war and six months thereafter.

New York, after hearings at which the objections were fully presented by officials of the state labor and health departments and by private individuals, gave to the state education authority power to suspend the compulsory education law from April 1 to November 1 each year. California took similar action. There the legislature granted power to the state board of education to reduce the school term to six months "when necessary for agricultural or horticultural purposes." The term is now legally six months but is actually much longer in many places.

In Minnesota a newly created Public Service Commission was given authority to "do anything necessary for public safety, protection of life, public or private property," and also anything necessary that "military, civil and industrial resources" may be most efficiently applied toward the defense

of state and nation. Governor Burnquist has interpreted this to mean that the commission "might have power to suspend laws relating to the hours of labor and similar laws," but the state department of labor and industries is contending that no such power has been given to the commission.

These are the specific acts of legislatures. In several states relaxation has occurred without legislation. The Pennsylvania State Board of Education decreed that farm and garden work should be valid excuse for absence from school, and that children in good standing over twelve years of age might be credited with such work in lieu of school attendance. A similar plan made headway in New Jersey, except that there an age limit of fourteen is put upon boys who are excused.

In an open letter to school officials the superintendent of schools of Baltimore County, Maryland, authorized an elaborate system of employment for boys and girls who are "old enough to be of real productive value." This reads like a chapter from those by-laws which progressive Englishmen recognize as the chief disgrace in their antiquated educational system. According to this letter, children over thirteen who have attended school for 100 days in the year may be employed. without permits; those who have attended less must have permits. A permit may be issued, moreover, to a child under thirteen if the child is not "too immature." The permits are good for twenty school days or less and may be renewed on the application of parents. On days when children are not employed they are required to attend school.

In North Dakota the attorney general has interpreted the law exempting children from school attendance "in case of necessity" to apply to children of school age who are actually at work tilling the soil.

Probably these instances do not exhaust the list of states that have relaxed their standards or made relaxation possible since war began in April. What states will follow and how far the process will go in those that take such action cannot be foretold. We know that in England early in the war conservative estimates placed the number at well over 100,000 of boys and girls of eleven, twelve and thirteen years of age who had been prematurely excused from school for work upon farms and in factories. This and other acts of relaxation and economy caused an exasperated educator in Parliament to declare that the school system of the country was "like the ruins of Louvain." 2 One cause of the radical change in English policy, only now bearing fruit, was the report of the Health of Munition Workers' Committee, which investigated conditions of labor and the effect of premature entrance into industry

2 For a fuller statement of English experience see The Children's Bit in the War, by the same author, the SURVEY, February 3, 1917, page 520.