and so protect those institutions in which we are seeking to embody and express our ideals!

And even between one-language nations has the confusion of tongues been lessened. In France, for example, German has for years been included in the curriculum of every lycée and college, and, so far as I could learn, the war has made no change. In the scheme of secondary studies decreed by the national authorities the following are among the texts assigned or suggested : Freytag, Sudermann, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Novalis, Auerbach, and many others; extracts from Mommsen, Treitschke, Kant, Nietzsche, Fichte, Hegel, and others, and ballads and songs of Bürger. And I infer from what I have read that Shakespeare, Rodin, and Dante have not been interned in Germany, though it is intimated that they are allowed their freedom on the ground that they are looked upon as of German genius.

Certainly we must intern those whose speech would poison our children's minds; we must keep them from our schools as we would keep bomb carriers from our docks. But we must not treat every man who has ever had the German language in his throat as the Gileadites treated the Ephraimites, slaying every man at the fords of the river Jordan who could not frame his lips to pronounce correctly the word "Shibboleth," but said "Sibboleth." We must keep in our association those who have spoken for human freedom, for the beautifying and ennobling of the human soul, even though they have spoken in the language of those who have in our day sung the "Hymn of Hate."

But it is not the confusion of tongues that is now dividing the earth. It is not a matter of vocabulary, of grammar, of syntax. The great Division physically marked by the red and still-bleeding gash in the earth across Europe is a division of purpose, of ideals, a confusion as to what makes right, as to what one generation should teach the next.

What lay back of the ancient confusion of tongues we do not know. It seemed to come suddenly. The bearers of brick and slime and the layers of brick could not understand one another, and the work stopped as if á strike had been declared. And so this new Division seemingly came in a night, but it was, as we know, long in preparation, for it had its beginnings back in the teaching of philosophers and schoolmasters, and in the sinister and selfish dreaming of emperors.

Meanwhile, the little "Pelegs" all over the world, those glorytrailing ones whose heads the light is still enhaloing, are asking, some in mute exhaustion, some in cries of pain when spitted upon bayonets or pierced by cold or torn by hunger, some in tears over the loss of father or brothers, some in stark death, and all in accusing wonderment are asking why they were brought into such a world of division: a planet of promised peace now become a planet that in its orbit gives off a stench of human blood in the universe, that is a sphere of pain flying through the night, a holocaust of hate smoking by day.

They cry in myriad tongues of confusion- starving Armenians and Serbians, joyless mechanized Germans, enslaved and nationless Belgians, exiled and fatherless French, munitionstained and factory-paled English. Till now we have heard our own children's laughter ringing above the woe of all the world slaughter:-above the groans of the wounded; the sobs of those who have lost their husbands, brothers, or sons; the thunder of the guns; and even these cries of the Old World children. But even these, our children, now turn to us, who have in the past talked of a free land and a civilized world, with their questioning. What shall we say to them? For what we say to them is our answer to our best selves and our answer to God and humanity. Why is our earth divided?

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Our answer will be: “ Children, here in America, where men and women of all tongues have come to speak again one tongue, our fathers established what we call a free government, under which it was desired that all men should be not only free but of equal opportunity, so far as that could be given, a government under which every man might have his fair chance.

But over on the other side of the water, yet so near that the people could hear what was whispered here, there lived a nation whose leaders said, as did those of old on the Plain of Shinar who were divided: Come, let us make a name? And like that ancient people who in their building had brick for stone and slime for mortar, they thought to build a structure that should command the earth and reach the sky, using brick

of their own synthetic making and philosophic reasoning instead of God's eternal stone of right, and slime-the slime of hatred and stealth and misrepresentation-to hold these bricks together.

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They broke their pledges to the weak; they laughed at the strong; they drowned the innocent in the sea; they butchered the innocent on land; they stained the air with murderous craft; they choked men with gas; they burned them with liquid fire; they poisoned wells and devastated whole villages, and did every savage thing that science could think of; they menaced that civilization which men have been trying since Christ's time to develop. Like Cain, they killed Abel because the fruits of his culture in .the sun, beneath a sky wide enough for both, seemed more acceptable than theirs.

"But, children, despite all this, we do not send forth our soldiers to fight in hate of men, but in hate of things. It is to do for you what our fathers did for us. We are fighting under a legend to make the world safe for democracy, but down in the bottom of our hearts we are fighting to make the world safe for you and all children ever of other tongues. We have brought you into this earth and we are going to make it as happy and as bright a place for you to live in as our sacrifice and our strength can make it.

"The stench which the earth gives off is but the burnt offer ing of this sacrifice; the hell through which we pass is but the way to make a heaven here for you; the holocaust is but the leaping flame that will purge the earth of rule by materialistic and militaristic might."

Hecuba's despair as she saw the child Astyanax borne to burial on Hector's shield is not ours-Hecuba, who saw only "eternal hate," who cried, " Vain, vain is blood upon the altars," and reconciled herself to fate in thinking that had these woes not been, "we had not been this splendor and our wrong an everlasting music for the sons of earth and heaven." For our Astyanax still lives, and is our hope in all this tragedy which the world is rewriting as it wrote two thousand years and more ago in the play of Euripides.

But what are the children of Eber in this land to do now that they are here? They must have their part in the redemption too. First, they must be disciplined in the schools of democracy by a more thorough education to occupy this world of purified spirit. Second, they must not forget to play, with it all. The earth will have need of their stronger bodies as well as their keener minds and braver spirits.

Third, they must know the nobility of labor and each must be prepared to give some service useful to the Nation which makes his freedom possible.

Fourth, they must save as they can to give more of what they have to these same defenders of the land which we are to leave

all to them.

Fifth, they must learn to give of their skill and sympathy and earning to that for which the Red Cross stands as symbol, the great world organization through which we rise to universal human sympathy and find citizenship in the Democracy of Mercy.

Sixth, they must come to love what America stands for, that they may in their day realize in peace what we have had in ours to fight for.

Seventh, they should come into correspondence with children in other parts of the world of democracy.

So even the ancient confusion of tongues will be forgotten, and they who are to-day " Pelegians" will have memories only of these days when the earth is divided.

Eber had another son, Joktan, the Small, born later; but Joktan's progeny disappeared in the hills off toward the east, while that of Peleg has given us the prophet, the lawgiver, the psalmist, and the divinest of all the world's teachers—the Great

Teacher.

And they who are to-day as Peleg in this land of ours chil dren in a world divided-will be the mightiest generation in potency the world has ever known, for in their day must the world be reunited, rehabilitated, rebuilt, rededicated to the thing we are ready to die for, the thing we want them to live for that they may be free, fine, glorious, righteous creatures of God in the earth.

And we are Peleg's father and teacher!

M

BY ANNIE P. HILLIS

RS. CHARLOTTE KELLOGG, the only woman. member of the Commission of Belgian Relief, has written a book upon the "Women of Belgium" which should command widespread interest, both for its subject-matter, which is of compelling interest in these days when the whole world's heart is throbbing with sympathy for the Belgians, and because it is well done.

When Mr. Hoover was appointed head of this Commission, he asked Professor Vernon Kellogg, of Stanford University, to assist him. Mrs. Kellogg accompanied her husband to Belgium, and was of so much assistance that she was appointed a member of the Commission. She was greatly impressed with what the Belgian women were doing, with their wonderful self-sacrifice, with their devoted patriotism, and with their resourcefulness in devising ways of relief. This was so little known by the outside world that Mrs. Kellogg, at the request of Mr. Hoover, set herself to the task of telling the world about Belgian women. This she has done in a book of intense interest in intimate vivid pictures of the women in various forms of relief which they have originated and have carried on for more than three long tragic years.

The first chapter in the book is appropriately devoted to "The Leaders," who are naturally Queen Elizabeth, "the leader typifying the highest ideal of their service and actual comrade in sorrow ;" and her friend and representative, Marie de Page, who, after working in her husband's base hospital at La Panue, came to this country to solicit aid for her countrymen, and, hastening home to see her second son, a lad of seventeen, before he joined his brother in the trenches, went down in the Lusitania on her journey.

It was no mean task which was set before the men and women of Belgium to see to the feeding of 3,000,000 destitute people. It was no ordinary demand that was laid upon the city of Brussels to keep 200,000--one-fifth of its entire population on the soupes, not for a month or two, but for more than three years. To meet this extraordinary emergency a huge kitchen was put in charge of a pre-war maître d'hotel. Ninety-five cooks and assistants from the best restaurants pride themselves on their skill and ingenuity in meeting the orders of the physicians and concocting something which shall be appetizing from the scant resources at their command. The results of their efforts are sent out in ten great trucks to the soupes all over the city, where the needy of the neighborhood are served by the women. In the long line are people from every rank and condition— the tall, distinguished-looking old man about whom little was known except that he was in want, the hunchback just out of hospital, the pretty girl from high school, railway employees, artists, men and women old and young, all bearing the mark of war. Every day they must come for the pint of soup and the piece of bread. A long, long line which permitted no delay, lest others equally suffering be kept waiting.

One day a woman offered her services to the seasoned workers. They said they would gratefully accept if after going home she would fill 1r bath-tub with water and ladle it out until it was empty-ari repeat this for three days, until finally she could endure the labor and not retard the line!

waste. 66

Another form of relief is the crèche. Mrs. Kellogg gives a touching description of one she visited in Dinant, formerly one of the gay pleasure-spots of Belgium, now scarred and laid Before the tragedy of her ruins one felt exactly as if a happy child had been crushed or mutilated." On her way to the crèche she passed a cemetery where many of the six hundred shot in August, 1914, are buried. Suddenly, while still in the devastated section, she heard the merry laughter of children, and soon came to a temporary building in front of which were a series of walled-in pens where fifty-two babies under four years of age were playing. With the true Belgian taste which must put a touch of decoration on the most humble surroundings, the builders had set up a row of poles carrying gayly painted cuckoos, cats, and lions. Inside a large airy room were long rows of cradles, where the babies take their daily naps.

Women of Belgium. By Charlotte Kellogg. The Funk & Wagnalls Company,

New York. $1.

(MRS. N. D. HILLIS)

They are children whose fathers are dead. Their mothers leave them at seven in the morning on their way to work, and call for them at seven in the evening. A physician inspects them and prescribes their food. It is a redeeming feature of the terrible condition that, at least, the care of the children is scientific and thoroughly studied, and as well carried out as the circumstances will permit. There are nineteen hundred of these shelters or crèches in Belgium.

The problem of employment for the hundreds of thousands thrown out of their usual situation is extremely difficult. For these workrooms are opened in great music halls, hippodromes, etc. In some of these work is cut out and prepared to be given out in little bundles to be sewed by mothers in their own homes; a bundle in two weeks if there is but one child, every week if there are more. In one city the very poor are invited to bring their clothing to be repaired for them by those who need work.

Employment, too, must be provided for the disabled soldiers. In two instances profitable industries have been established through the ingenuity and skill of women, one of them an artist, who were suddenly left to provide for their own children and those of relatives. Really beautiful toys have been devised, made from the cheapest and most common materials-toys which would find a ready market were the way open for them to come to America.

"The Drop of Milk" is a provision for expectant or young mothers without means, where they may receive a proper dinner each day, giving for it some light service. About seven thousand mothers are receiving such help and six thousand more come for advice.

Space will not permit telling of the many intimate little incidents which lend charm to the book and bring us close to the heart of the Belgians, nor quoting the sometimes amusing illustrations of the resourcefulness and popularity of the Americans who went in to help; but I cannot pass unnoticed the story of Cardinal Mercier's Mass on the Belgian Independence Day, July 24, 1916. It is a pity to abbreviate it by a word:

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"All Brussels knew that the Cardinal was coming to celebrate High Mass in St. Gudule's at eleven o'clock. At 9:30 practically every foot of standing room in the vast Cathedral was taken. In the dimness a great sea of people waited patiently, silently. "Finally-I could watch the face of the Cardinal-a face at once keen and tender, strong, fearless, and devout, one could read it all there. He was tall, thin, dominating, a heroic figure in his gorgeous scarlet vestments, officiating at the altar of this beautiful Gothic cathedral.

"The Cardinal mounted the pulpit at the farther end of the nave to deliver his message, the same message he has been preaching for two years they must hold themselves courageous, unconquered, with steadfast faith in God and in their final liberation. Tears were in the eyes of many, but there was no crying out.

"From the pulpit he came back to the catafalque erected for the Belgian soldiers dead in battle. The dim light of the Cathedral, the sea of silent people, the memorial coffin under the flag and lighted by tall candles, the circle of those chosen to represent the city, the sad-faced Cardinal-was it strange that as his voice ceased and he moved slowly toward the sacristy door by which he was to depart, the overwhelming tide of emotion swept away barriers, and Vive le Roi! Vive Monseigneur! echoed once more from these ancient walls? We held our breath. Men were pressing by me whispering, What shall we do? We have necessity to cry out-after two years we must cry out!'"

The people had seen the Cardinal, they had received their spiritual secours he had brought heavenly comforts to their hearts, put new iron in their blood. They had dared to cry just once their loyalty to him and to their King, and they laughed at the one million marks which was their fine.

It is a book which the women of America should know from cover to cover, and for which they should show appreciation to the American woman who represented them as long as the Commission was allowed to remain in "brave little Belgium."

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