other heroes of war and peace. Many of their achievements have been celebrated in worthy verse. The great orations of Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison and others, and the magnificent state papers of Woodrow Wilson, are well calculated to stir the spirit of true patriotism in the hearts of noble children, and they should not be ignorant of those splendid compositions.

A year or more before the great war, a young man was speaking lightly one evening of "all this sentimental rot about 'love of country'"; how it showed "that a man hadn't traveled," and is "provincial." He spoke in the tone affected by a certain class of blasé, hypersophisticated youths, who might well be punished by the same means that were used for Edward Everett Hale's "Man Without a Country,"—another book which all older children should know.

The boy had recently returned from a long sojourn abroad. His mother was horrified to hear his words, though she had detected an unsoundness in his views ever since he had come back. Still, she said nothing at the moment. She wanted to think it over.

One evening shortly afterward the family were assembled on the broad porch. Several guests were present. It was warm, but a soft breeze blew in from the moonlighted Hudson just below them. Some one suggested that it was just the time for poetry. Why should not every one recite his favorite poem?

They began. One gave Rudyard Kipling's stirring "Song of the English." Another followed with a portion of Tennyson's "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," beginning with the familiar words,

By this time, the party of eight or ten cultivated people were all plainly affected. The one who sat next said, "I was going to recite 'The Antiseptic Baby,'—and, of course, that is always good, but it doesn't seem to chime in with our mood to-night. I used to know Daniel Webster's great speech on the Constitution. Maybe I can recall it," and slowly he rolled forth the stately words.

When the mother's turn came, she begged them not to groan if she should give them a very well-worn selection, and started out upon Walter Scott's, "Lives There a Man with Soul so Dead."

There was some derision in the laugh which greeted her first words, but all were soon caught in the swirl of the great sentiment, and when she came to the line "Unwept, unhonored and unsung," there was long applause, the blasé youth joining in most heartily of all.

"That's an old corker, isn't it, mother!" he cried. "I'd forgotten that it was so lively. There's a lot in it."

She knew that his ideas were being cleared.

All of this heroism and love of country is represented by our flag. Its meaning should be explained to our children. Teaching them to salute it, and to repeat the words which go with the salute, becomes a mere form unless they understand its deeper significance. Henry Ward Beecher once gave a noble interpretation of it, which has been amplified by Secretary Franklin K. Lane in an address to the employees of the Department of the Interior. Only a few words of it can be given here, but your children should hear or read them all.

The Flag seemed to say to him: "The work that we do is the making of the Flag. I am not the Flag at all. I am but its shadow. I am all that you hope to be and have the courage to try for.

"I am the day's work of the weakest man and the largest dream of the most daring. I am the Constitution and the courts, statutes and statute-makers, soldier and dreadnaught, drayman and street-sweep, cook, counselor and clerk. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this nation. My stars and stripes are your dream and your labors. They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with faith, because you have made them so,—for you are the makers of the Flag."

This is no mere sentimental fancy.

The thrill of the flag is best understood by those who have seen it on a foreign shore; but the deepest thrill of all comes on beholding the flag which bears the marks of shot and shell.

A little boy of six, who had been considered in his family as unemotional, was one day riding with his mother past a public building, gaily decorated with bunting. Among the unstained banners above the entrance hung a cluster of old battle-flags. The child gazed at them with the greatest interest. Then he turned suddenly to his mother.

"Which do you like best, mother?" he asked. "The bright new flags, or the old, ragged flags that have been in the battle?"

"Which do you like best?" she said.

"Oh," he replied, while his little lip quivered, "I like best the old, ragged flags that have been in the battle,—don't you?"

This child had been brought up from infancy upon the stories and poems of the patriots of the past, but he had never shown before such a marked effect from them. This effect grew with his years.

The most stolid and selfish child can be made into a fervid patriot, I firmly believe, by a proper use of the great patriotic literature.

Until within a short time, some of us have deprecated the idea of filling the minds of our children with visions of killing and of killers, however brave and noble. But we have learned that, as long as there are barbarians in the world threatening to overwhelm civilization, the arts of war must still be practiced. History has described civilizations as good as ours, perhaps better, which were destroyed by barbarians, physically stronger than the gentler races which they attacked. So long as powerful tribes exist, covetous of the wealth and the territory of their neighbors, and willing to trample down everybody and everything else to get them, what can we do but fight?

That means, in the terms of to-day, that we must still sing to our children the glories of war. Americans properly hate war. It is antiquated, out of date,—utterly opposed to the spirit of the twentieth century. We should bring up our children to see that it is just that, and that we are fighting now simply because otherwise barbarism would overspread the world,—a barbarism which includes autocracy and militarism as its chief features, two elements which are intolerable in a world of democracy.

And yet war is often a purifying fire. It has its noble and uplifting side. This is the side which is emphasized in the heroic tales which have been mentioned, and which makes for the development of patriotism in the child and in the man.

CHAPTER II