"Napoleon—I call him that because his name was Caesar—is at the 'movies' this afternoon." Upon further inquiry, I learned that the mother did not know the name and nature of the play upon which her son was looking, and that in order to keep him out of mischief he was sent every afternoon to the motion picture theatres. Here was the good mother tasting every mouthful fed to the heir-apparent lest harm befall him, and, yet, he was spending an hour or more daily in attendance at a motion-picture theatre where poison rather than food might be and probably was fed to the child's mind. But no hesitation and no fear were felt on that score. Underlying the one concern and the other unconcern is a crude materialism which assumes that the avenue of access to a child's well-being is feeding but that the mind, howsoever fed and impoisoned, even of a little child, could somehow be trusted to take care of itself.

There are certain things which we deny to our children partly because we have them not, and yet again because we are not often conscious of the need of them in the life of the child. I place first spiritual-mindedness; second, the sense of humility, and third, the art of service. These three graces must come again into the life of our children from the life of their parents and they can hardly come in any other way. If they come not, it will be an unutterable loss from every point of view, remembering the word of a distinguished university president, "the end of the home is the enlargement and enrichment of personality, the performance of the duty owed to general society in making contributions for its betterment."

I address myself particularly to Jewish parents when I say to them that it is a terrible blunder to ignore the spiritual responsibility which rests upon them. A Christian child is almost invariably touched by the circumambient spiritual culture but the Jewish child is in the midst of a non-Jewish culture and almost untouched by spiritual influences. The home gives little, the Jewish religious school gives no more than a fragmentary education in the things of Jewish history instead of exercising a characteristic spiritual influence. And, as for the Synagogue, it is the part of kindness or of guilt to be silent touching its hardly sufficing influence in American Israel in the creation of a distinctive spiritual atmosphere or the enhancement of definite spiritual values.

With respect to the spirit of humility, I happened not long ago to confer with two young men, one of whom is about to enter into the ministry. When asked quite conventionally what it was that had moved him to think of himself as especially fitted for the ministry, his answer was: "I feel that I am a born leader of men." On the other hand, I asked a young graduate of an American university who was about to leave for Europe what was his life's purpose, and he answered: "To serve in the foreign mission field." Is it not true that the youth who felt that he was a born leader and sought a field in which he could exercise the qualities of leadership lacked spirituality, was wholly without humility, evidently did not have the faintest understanding of the possibilities of service, and the other revealed the possession of spiritual-mindedness, of humility and finally the spirit of service.

There is no more serious indictment to be framed against the family than that it does little and often nothing to foster the social spirit. The home is not often enough a school of applied social ethics, and the home that is not is likely to witness such conflict as arises out of revolt against the smugly self-centered and unsocialized home on the part of those sons and daughters who have caught a gleam of the social life. If we had or could share with our children the spirit of service, would not great numbers of young people throughout the land rise up, eager for service to Israel in the midst of its terrible needs at home and abroad? Few were the well-circumstanced youth in the course of the war, who gave themselves to service through agencies classed as non-military, and fewer still such as volunteered for service as relief workers in East-European lands at the close of the war—again among the well-to-do. This is very largely a matter of upbringing, of the ideals implanted by parents and teachers. What is your son's ideal of living? Is it to serve or to be served? Do you try hard enough to get out of your son's head the notion that being served by butler and valet and chauffeur is the greatest thing in the world? The greatest thing in the world is not being served but serving, to be least served and most serviceable.

As Tolstoy put it, I believe shortly before his death, woman's bearing and nursing and raising children will be useful to humanity only when she raises up children not merely to seek pleasure but to be truly the servants of mankind. The ultimate question underlying every other is, what are you giving to the souls of your children? And the answer is,—what you are. "In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money, stead me nothing. They are all lost on him: but as much soul as I have avails. If I am merely willful, he gives me a Roland for an Oliver, sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me." [E]

Thus pleads Emerson in the name of the child's potential oversoul. Not long ago, I made an attempt to interest a young woman of a well-known family in social service. She shuddered as if some verminous thing had been held up to her gaze. "Not for me that kind of thing." You must teach your children the methods and the practice of selfless service. If you do not, well, your children may rise up against you or fall to your own level, or, worst of all, awaken and discover what you are.

CHAPTER VI

WARS THAT ARE NOT WARS

Every difference between parent and child is somehow assumed to be rooted in and ascribable to the inherent perversities of the parental-filial relation. When scrutinized, these will often be found to be wholly unrelated thereto. Ever are parents and children ready to take it for granted that their clashing arises out of the relation between them when in truth, viewed dispassionately and from the vantage-ground of remoteness, parent and child are not pitted against each other at all. They are persons whose conflict has not the remotest bearing upon the relation that obtains between them. Would not much heartache be avoided, if parents and children clearly understood that the grounds of difference between themselves, however serious and far-reaching these sometimes become, are not related to or connected with the special relation that holds them together?

Thus the irritations of propinquity may not be less irritating when seen to arise out of the fact of physical contact rather than from the circumstance of intellectual antagonism or moral repulsion, but it is well to know that such irritations are not the skirmishes of life-long domestic war. I say "irritations of propinquity," for, excepting among the angels, the status of propinquity cannot be permanently maintained without at least