IT is impossible for any one to understand or to deal intelligently with the problems of our boys and girls without holding clearly in mind the dual nature of youth. Those of us of an older generation are apt to forget the conflicts of our younger days, the warring elements within that waged ceaseless and strenuous battle for mastery. The schoolmaster and the teacher, however, who deal year after year with the younger generation, cannot possibly forget. Day by day and hour by hour they witness in the lives and actions of those about them the scenes and struggles of their own childhood. Reminded constantly in this way of the problems of their own youth, they are enabled to enter with keener appreciation into the problems of those with whom they deal. With the memory of their own experiences ever vividly before them, the advice and suggestions which they are able to offer have at least the merit of being based on intelligence rather than theory.

Youth is definitely the period of vision. The old Hebrew prophet who wrote, "Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams" uttered an eternal truth. And the dreams of old age bring their satisfactions or regrets just in so far as those spiritual visions of youth have been realized or not in the maturer years of manhood.

At the opening of a school year a father presented himself with his son. He was an exceptionally able and successful lawyer from a western city, and at the time was serving as attorney for one of the great transcontinental railway systems. At the first morning chapel service of the term he had taken a seat in the visitors' gallery. As I was leaving the pulpit at the close of the brief religious exercise I noticed the man making his way up the aisle. He came forward and extended his hand. To my surprise I noted very evident traces of tears on his face. Something had clearly moved him deeply. He spoke with very genuine emotion. "Mr. Stearns," he said, "you can see that I have been making something of a fool of myself this morning. But I am not sorry," he added quickly. " The fact is," he continued, " I have had one of the great experiences of my life this morning, and I want to tell you about it. I'm not much on this church business; in fact, I don't think I have been inside a church for many years, though I was brought up in an old-fashioned Christian New England home and know better. But when I sat in the gallery this morning, and saw those five hundred heads bow as one man at the beginning of your prayer, something gripped me inside and I cried like a baby. And I'm not ashamed of it either," he went on; "that experience has been a great lesson to me, and I am not going to forget it. Hereafter, while my boy remains in school, I mean to get to every chapel exercise I can possibly attend."

He was true to his word, and for the next three years it was no uncommon thing to find him in the chapel gallery at the morning exercise. And always he would greet me at its close with the same warm expression of appreciation of what that earlier experience had meant in his life. Occasionally he would telegraph me from his western home, and in some such words as these: "Have an important law case in New York next week; will be at chapel Saturday morning." And when Saturday morning came he would be on hand as agreed.

Two graduates of the school had returned to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of their class. Both had attained positions of unusual prominence in business and professional life. One was known to be worth millions; the other had held important public offices. They had devoted an afternoon to wandering about the countryside and revisiting the old and cherished scenes of schoolboy days. Towards evening they returned to the campus and paused for a few moments under the shadows of the familiar elms. For some time neither spoke. At length the successful business man broke the silence. "Jim," he said with almost resentful impulsiveness, "we fellows in the big business world aren't living. We're not really living; and those of us who have had school days like ours know it."

What was it that brought the tears to the eyes of that successful lawyer at the mere sight of the bowed heads of five hundred boys, and wrung from a prosperous business man, as the memories of school days crowded fast upon him, the frank admission that in spite of material wealth life to him had been in a very real sense a failure? A schoolmaster living constantly with youth can answer. It was the dreams of old age carrying memory back to the days of youth and vision, and the consciousness that those high and spiritual visions had not been fully realized in the later years. And such dreams, when once awakened, bring always only bitter regrets.

Prompted by such visions to fight for the attainment of a high goal, youth battles ever with the physical temptations that spring from within and the lure of a material and pleasure-loving world without. Small wonder then that it so often fails. All credit to it when it wins.

The Apostle Paul, always a boy at heart, has expressed for all ages the eternal spirit of youth. His words are those which consciously or unconsciously ever spring from youthful hearts: "When I would do good evil is present with me. The good that I would, I do not, and the evil which I would not, that I do. I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."

This is youth,---struggling, aspiring, yielding, overcoming,---succumbing one moment to the ruthless attacks of physical temptation, answering the next the clear and compelling challenge of spiritual vision; making a fool of himself one day and a man of himself the next; stooping unexpectedly to deeds that shame him and win our pity and contempt, rising again to heights of spiritual grandeur that the rest of us can never hope to reach; reacting in startling and yet perfectly normal ways to the influences which for the moment surround him; wresting from the stern and inescapable struggles of those early years whatever character is later to be his.

All of us, in a measure, are potential "Dr. Jekylls" and "Mr. Hydes" but never more intensely so than in the days of our youth. Almost every day of a schoolmaster's life supplies convincing illustrations of this. Let me give a recent one out of my own experience.

A moving-picture house, situated in close proximity to the campus of Yale University, offered as a special attraction a film based upon a book of that modern variety which has gained such wide popularity in recent years because of its daring and its willingness to cater to the weaker side of human nature by trampling on the decencies of life and flaunting the base and abnormal in human relationships. With a clear understanding of the nature of youth and its sensitiveness to the lower appeal, the management had widely advertised among the student body the film in question and its special features.

Boy-like, the students had responded to this appeal. They had flocked in large numbers to witness the film, just as you and I would have done in the days of our youth had such films existed and such questionable pastimes attained the degree of respectability that they now enjoy.

Among the boys in the audience this Sunday afternoon were two young fellows, well known to me, for they had been members of my school. They had slipped into gallery seats and were quietly watching the picture. Suddenly smoke was seen rising on the stage. The cry of "Fire" rang through the theatre, and almost at the same moment flames leaped through the flimsy scenery. In sudden panic the crowd jumped to its feet and rushed madly for the exits.

At the first cry of "Fire" the two young fellows in the gallery had made a hasty flight and stood in safety on the landing of the fire escape just outside the hall. Here for a moment they paused. They glanced back, and their eyes gazed on a scene of indescribable confusion and horror. The crowd, which only a moment before had been quietly seated, enjoying to the full the picture as it was unfolded before their eyes, had suddenly been transformed into a frantic, struggling mob, seeking only safety and life. As the boys gazed they saw helpless women borne down before the onrushing mob, and young children trampled under foot, in some cases, to their death.

For only a second those boys stood there, stunned by the scene which met their eyes. But in that scene came the challenge to their spiritual natures, the real manhood within, and without a moment's further hesitation, those brave fellows, who only a few minutes before had yielded to the weaker impulse, turned and fought their way back into the pit of death from which they had just escaped. Once inside, they took their positions at the two sides of the fire-escape door. With almost superhuman strength they forced the struggling crowd to open an aisle through which women and children could pass to safety. They reached down and picked helpless ones from under trampling feet and passed them to waiting hands outside. They lifted children over the heads of those who surrounded them, and fairly tossed them to other boys beyond the door.

Finally, some of those who had been denied exit by these brave youths locked arms and rushed them, determined to force their way out. One of the boys was knocked out of the door and down the fire escape, receiving serious injuries which confined him for some time to the hospital. The other managed to jump aside and still maintain his position. As he fought on heroically, the flames which had now engulfed the entire theatre, set fire to his clothes and singed his face and hands. At last, when nothing further could be done, and the crowd which jammed the doorway made escape through that exit impossible, this brave lad made his way down through the auditorium to the main doorway and stumbled out on to the street, still conscious but hardly recognizable. Eager friends rushed him to the college hospital where everything humanly possible was done to save his life. For three days he lay there suffering but clear in mind. Knowing that death hovered only a few hours away, he would look into the face of his weeping mother and say with a ring of triumph in his voice, "Don't cry, Mother; I have no regrets." And then he would add with evident pride, "Anyway, Mother, I think I was the last to leave the theatre alive."

I believe it would be impossible to find an incident illustrating so clearly as does this one the dual nature of youth and its delicate sensitiveness to the particular influences and conditions with which, for the moment, it chances to be surrounded. The baser appeal had had its innings, but the spiritual appeal following so closely had won. Those boys, in their superb heroism, had proved the eternal truth of the saying of theMaster Himself, He who loses his life shall save it"; and Allen Keith, in those last moments of heroic sacrifice, had met the highest test of spiritual manhood and Christian discipleship. And Allen Keith had "no regrets."

It is these constant and tremendous contrasts that make youth so intensely interesting. And it is the recognition of these that has prompted Christian civilization to render freely its support and encouragement to every worthy aim and high endeavor, and to protect and restrain to the full limit of its power when weaker and baser impulses assail and temptations threaten to undermine and destroy. It has framed laws to aid in holding sinister temptation in check. It has evolved customs and traditions that have sought to make evil odious and virtue sublime. It has thrown its protecting mantle about youth in the days of instability when protection is needed. It has pointed the way to the nobler and more satisfying life of self-control, when the challenging vision of that higher life was clear but the strength to attain it insufficient.

Through the passing centuries civilization has built up these safeguards and supports. Indeed, this is one of the distinctive characteristics of that civilization we call Christian. If we are losing or weakening these to-day, we must needs face the future with apprehension.

Remembering always, then, this dual nature of youth, let us examine the agencies which civilization has developed to aid in this eternal fight for virile and self-controlled manhood and womanhood. Let us note, too, honestly and without prejudice, the extent to which these agencies have been weakened or swept aside during recent years, and the character of such influences as have supplanted them.

OF all the agencies that have contributed to the upbuilding of western civilization none has exercised a greater or more steadying influence than has the home. The extent of that influence, especially in our American life, cannot be exaggerated. The home is the foundation of it all. On it rests whatever is of value or permanent in civic and economic life.

The changes that have come over the American home in recent years are plain enough. To one who recognizes their true significance they are startling. But it is not easy to discuss them and to make their meaning clear; for, after all, the home is not merely a building with roof and walls in which the family resides, but rather an atmosphere, an influence, intangible but sacred and very real.

The breakdown of our American home life has been a popular theme of discussion everywhere. But I doubt whether any one better than a schoolmaster can appreciate the extent of that breakdown or its sinister influence on the plastic lives of to-morrow's citizens. Yesterday's home was a home of moral standards and spiritual ideals, professed at least, and in the main supported. Parents ruled supreme, and their will, based on the experience of the passing years, was law to their fortunate children. Service was gladly rendered and sacrifices willingly made, that the younger generation might profit in the days to come. Discipline, without which vigorous manhood and womanhood are impossible, was freely administered when the occasion required. Mindful always of the future welfare of the younger generation, parents did not hesitate to face the momentary frown and tear and to estimate them at their true worth.

The home so prominent to-day is of a different type. City life, with its hotels, apartments, and flats, has exerted a deadening influence upon it; but it has been even more dangerously undermined by the pronounced change in the attitude of parents themselves. Parents sometimes reside in the modern home on their way to and from the pressing duties of business and professional life and the alluring appeals of club and society; but the old atmosphere is lacking; the service rendered by the older generation is largely for self, and real sacrifice is hard to find. Whatever atmosphere exists is chiefly the creation of the younger generation, which rules pretty much as it wills. We must search altogether too far for that type of home and its accompanying environment which, through the passing years, has built up all that is best and finest in our American life.

Of course, the home has always been and must always be what parents make it; and if the younger generation is now in control, it is only because parents have refused to accept the divinely appointed trust that is properly theirs.

The schoolmaster who deals constantly with modern parents of varying types is more and more impressed with the inherent values that exist in youth. The wonder is that youth has done so well, facing so often a heavy handicap.

Even before they have been seen parents will pretty clearly identify and classify themselves through the attitude and reactions of their offspring. Careless or earnest, ignorant or intelligent, selfish or high-minded, superficial or sane, erratic or balanced, they are generally revealed by a study of their children. Never, perhaps, is that revelation clearer or more sudden than when trouble arises and merited discipline threatens. Under such conditions they will regularly be found to belong to one of three groups.

First, there is the parent who unhesitatingly, and with every force at command, seeks to avert the threatened blow. These are the most common. The extremes to which resort is made under such conditions would be only ludicrous if they were not so tragic. Anything to save the family from what is felt to be disgrace. Anything to protect from temporary discomfort the erring child. Parents have a way of appearing at headquarters on such occasions, though, until the blow threatens, the schoolmaster might believe that they did not even exist. If they lack an intellectual and cultural background, and have obtained unusual and perhaps quick success in the acquiring of material wealth, they will sometimes produce a lawyer, whose duty it evidently is to create an impression and stage an effect. What they are really seeking to do is to prevent that one thing which unstable youth needs more than anything else in the world, and at just this time, if weaknesses are to be overcome and self-reliant manhood achieved. Herein lies the tragedy of it all.

Any schoolmaster can relate countless incidents in support of my contention. There are several which always stand out vividly in my memory, and that will serve to illustrate my point.

A few years ago a boy was dismissed from school for a flagrant offence. He had presented a telegram signed by his mother, in which it was clearly stated that his father, who was ill, had been ordered South by his doctor for his health, that he must see the boy on immediate business before leaving home, and that an excuse should consequently be secured from me in order to make the visit and the interview possible. The request was promptly granted, and the boy left for his home. He returned at the proper time, made known his presence, and the matter was dismissed from my thoughts. It was revived only by accident a month or two later, when I had occasion to write the father, calling attention to the boy's delinquencies in his studies. My letter brought a reply from Florida, in which it was stated that the writer had been in Florida since October, and hence had had no chance to see or discuss matters with his boy, but that he would return in the early spring. He promised to write and use his influence in supporting our contention that the young man should exert himself more earnestly in the performance of his school duties, and he begged us to use our best influences in the meantime to prevent disaster. As the visit home had occurred in January, it was evident that there was something wrong. An interview with the boy promptly brought out the facts. The telegram had actually been sent by the mother, ---it had even been carried to the telegraph office by the sister,---but, instead of an interview with a disabled father, the real purpose of the visit was a coming-out party of a young lady in whom the boy and his family were exceptionally interested. The boy's dismissal naturally followed.

No acknowledgment even was received of my letter stating what had occurred, and the grounds for the school's action. Late in the following summer, however, the indulgent mother suddenly awoke to a realization of the fact that her boy would not be able to gain admission to his chosen college without a letter of honorable dismissal from his last school. Not daring to trust her precious errand to the medium of a letter, and deeming it inadvisable to notify me in advance of the intent of her visit, the mother made three trips to Andover before she was successful in finding me at home at the close of my summer vacation. I shall never forget the interview. She was a prominent and wealthy society woman in one of our large eastern cities. She swept into my house one evening just as I had finished my dinner. One glance convinced me that she had prepared herself with care, both outwardly and inwardly, for an important occasion. That she was a wonderful actress was early apparent. Her first greeting, however, as I entered the room was enough to put me on my guard.

Gazing rather dramatically into my eyes, she exclaimed with fervor, "Now that I have looked into your eyes, I know that my prayers are to be answered." Being somewhat unaware of the nature of those prayers, I was placed in an embarrassing position; but I was not long kept in ignorance.

In the course of a three-hour interview she proved her wonderful dramatic ability. In turn she was gushing, friendly, pious, threatening, and abusive. She had only one purpose, and that was to secure from me the letter which would enable her son to enter college. With mingled feelings of amusement, apprehension, and surprise, I watched and listened, interjecting as I could such sentiments as I thought the occasion required. Finally, I felt it necessary to bring matters to a head.

"Madam," I said with feeling, "please don't let me misunderstand you or misinterpret your position. Do you really mean that you wish me to go to the desk yonder and write a letter which will enable your boy to enter college when you know and I know and he knows that every word of that letter is a deliberate lie?"

She drew herself up with great dignity, and with scathing sarcasm replied, "I suppose then that I stand in the presence of the only perfect man."

I assured her promptly and with vigor that I made no claims to that distinction, that my record was full of flaws, but that she was asking of me the impossible, and that it was useless for us to argue the point further.

With a still greater and more tragic show of injured dignity, she rose from her seat, and, with sweeping irony, launched her last attack. (It should be noted that the incident occurred at the time a former occupant of the White House was somewhat in the lime-light.)

"Do you know," she said with chilling emphasis, "the first time I ever saw you was out on the football field last fall. My son pointed you out to me as you crossed the field. I remarked to him then that you reminded me of President Wilson." She paused a moment to allow this thrust to sink home. " But," she added with biting sarcasm, "I never supposed I should live to see the day when I would discover that you were like Mr. Wilson."

To this day I am wondering whether the good lady was a Republican or a Democrat.

Needless to say, the boy involved, facing in life's struggle such an unfair handicap as this, had not a fighting chance for manhood, save by the interference of Providence. A boy under these conditions can scarcely hope for anything better than the life of a human derelict.

I recall another and very similar experience. An irate father whose son had been dismissed for misusing an excuse granted him to visit a supposedly dying grandmother, and who had taken advantage of the unexpected postponement of this event to attend an intercollegiate football match, stood in my office attended by a supporting lawyer. At the close of a strenuous and stormy interview, he leaned over my desk, shook his fist in my face, and fairly hissed, "G--- d---n you, I'll get you yet."

This incident has always had a peculiar interest for me because of later developments. It was not many months after this that the erring boy, who possessed qualities which would unquestionably have made a worth-while man of him had they been given reasonable chances for development, was asked by his own mates in college to withdraw for violation of regulations established by the undergraduates themselves.

Parents will even go to further extremes than those mentioned above in their blind desire to ignore patent facts and conceal truths which are unpleasant to them.

A student was dismissed from school for leaving his room without permission during the late evening hours. He had heard that his housemaster had been called out of town, and he had decided to make a night of it himself. An excuse to visit the library from eight to ten in the evening had regularly been granted him earlier in the day. Returning to his room before the time had expired, he had made his plans and taken his departure. The instructor, coming in a little later, noticed a paper on the boy's door and examined it. It was a note signed by the occupant of the room and read as follows: "Returned at 9:55; have gone to bed." The instructor pulled out his watch. It was then 9:30. The discrepancy was a bit surprising and disconcerting. Further examination revealed the absence of the boy, and the presence in his bed of a hastily constructed dummy. The house-master's long vigil was rewarded in the early morning hours when he saw the figure of the boy emerging from the shadows and watched it disappear through the window of a ground-floor room. The boy was promptly dismissed. The letter relating the factsto the father brought forth a somewhat unusual and instructive reply. Here it is:

"In regard to his leaving his room during the study hours, it was a minor offence, but, of course, deserving of punishment; but on the note on his door is where you make your mistake. You, like all professors, judge boys by outward appearances, without knowing anything of the inner boy himself. He is undoubtedly heedless, careless, and thoughtless, and it never entered his head that he was writing a lie until you told him of it."

And then adds the father rather naïvely: "He has never told me a lie in his sixteen years of life."

How could he?

The unfortunate element in situations like these is the impression that they leave on youthful minds. But the essential thing after all is the attempt to ward off just punishment when punishment is the only possible thing that can correct. Not only is the value of merited discipline, so often the deciding factor in moulding wavering youth into stable manhood, denied, but the real evils of wrongdoing are forever concealed, and the youngster faces life with no clear sense of values and too many times handicapped beyond redemption.

Then there are the parents who cannot agree. Differences in opinions, methods, and policies have ever prevailed; peace and concord have never shown their heads, and the development of rugged character is impossible. Such conditions breed restlessness and deceit, for in nature's own way from the days of infancy the child seems to sense the character of the atmosphere about him, and, with almost devilish instinct, plays these parents one against the other; and sad to say he always wins.

In one year of my experience three boys deliberately ran away from school. The incidents were unusual. They set me thinking. It happended that one of the offenders was a son of an extremely wealthy man. The father claimed with a good deal of feeling that the boy would never have done this foolish thing if it had not been for the father's prominence in the financial and social world, the craving for notoriety which would be thus satisfied, and the conviction that the father in the end would assuredly interfere and restore the old connection. In this case I happened to know the facts, and I knew that the father was wrong. Indeed, my sympathy was all with the boy, as it has been ever since.

This knowledge prompted an investigation of the home conditions involved in the other two cases. The results were illuminating. In all three cases parental disagreement was manifest. In the first case mentioned there had been recent and open divorce; in the other two, separations. In all cases the boys had been denied what every child born in a Christian civilization has a right to demand---a home and all that a home in its truest sense signifies. Between warring parents these youngsters had been mere shuttlecocks, human playthings as it were, shunted first to the influence of one, then to the other, according to the dictates of the law and the whims of their parents. It was interesting to note also that they represented all classes of the social scale; for, in addition to the boy whose family boasted untold wealth and social position, there was the boy from the family of moderate means, and the boy who, without any help from home, was at the time working his way through school.

These cases may seem a bit extreme, but they only serve to emphasize the unchanging truth that where discord between parents prevails, the greater the disagreements the smaller the chance for the innocent victims of parental war.

Sometimes the tragedy of such situations is for the moment concealed by the comic element which is almost always present. The schoolmaster who deals with parents is bound to develop, if he did not possess it originally, a sense of humor. If this were not so, the strain would perhaps be too great for human nature to bear, for where the average individual deals intimately with a score or less of parents the schoolmaster deals with hundreds.

A schoolmaster friend of mine relates an incident which illustrates my point. Here again a boy had failed to meet his school responsibilities, and had been asked to withdraw. As usual the parents appeared and the customary battle began. As not infrequently happens, the mother was the aggressor, but the father, who sat quietly by, apparently accustomed to preserve his silence when his wife had once taken the floor, gave clear evidence of his determination to support his spouse in her claims, and at any cost. The headmaster, long accustomed to conflicts of this kind, had decided that he could deal with the mother, but he was a bit puzzled and troubled as he noted the threatening silence of her husband. He watched him out of the corner of his eye as the battle progressed, and with increasing feelings of apprehension. That he would enter the struggle in time seemed apparent, but how and when was the puzzling question.

The facts in the case were carefully reviewed, the headmaster insisting that there was nothing really vicious about the boy, and that only his failure to conform to the regular school requirements, to catch the spirit of the place and to do the work assigned him, had led to his failure and downfall.

But the mother was unconvinced. "I know," she said emphatically, "that there is something more back of this, and what that is I demand to be told." The father nodded approval, and the headmaster watched.

"I assure you, madam," he replied, "there is nothing more involved than that which I have already told you." But the woman was stubborn. Finally she launched a telling blow.

"If that is the case," she said imperiously, "why was my boy denied admission to another school?" She mentioned the school by name. "The headmaster," she added, "assured me that he couldn't accept my boy because of something that you had written him."

This was something of a poser, but the headmaster did not propose to yield. "I don't recall just what I wrote," he said smilingly, "but I can assure you that I said nothing more than I have said to-day. Indeed, I am perfectly willing that you should see a copy of the letter itself."

"I demand to see it," she exclaimed with some heat.

The headmaster started for his files, gazing apprehensively at the silent partner near by. He drew forth the letter and began to read it. It started smoothly and his spirits were rising, but, as he drew near the close, his eye caught sight of a short paragraph at the very end and his heart sank. To omit this paragraph now would involve him in trouble, for the letter did not end just right without it. There was nothing to do but finish the task and face the storm. With one more glance at the silent father, he plunged bravely in. And this is what he read: "The boy, as I have told you, is not bad, but the real trouble is that he has been badly spoiled by his mother."

The expected explosion immediately followed. It came from the father, but it was not of the kind anticipated. Almost leaping from his chair, he brought his hand down on his knee with a whack and fairly bellowed: "God, I'm glad I came! And that isn't the worst of it," he added. "I have two daughters at home, and she has ruined them too." For the rest of the visit the father, who had apparently for the first time in years found a supporting friend, almost had his arms around the headmaster's neck. They parted with affectionate terms of friendship and esteem.

In strong contrast to the types of parents which have been mentioned, it is refreshing to turn to those of another kind, and it is good to know that such still exist, even though they are so sadly outnumbered by their more noisy and belligerent friends. Nothing is more stimulating and refreshing to a headmaster's soul than to meet in the course of his work, and especially where discipline is involved, the quiet, sane, and supporting parents who have not forgotten the days of their own youth; who realize that their children will make mistakes and stumble and yield; who are aware that they themselves were guilty of such lapses; but who know, too, that whatever strength and self-control they have secured for the later and maturer years have been gained through the just punishment and stern discipline which their offences brought upon them. Facing parents of this type, the schoolmaster has little concern for the nature of the offence of the erring son. He knows that just as sure as the sun rises and sets that boy will in the end make good; the seriousness of his offence will be brought home to him, the justice of the punishment will be emphasized, and faith and sanity will bring their ultimate and deserved reward.

Years of experience have driven home to me the truth of this contention more strongly than perhaps anything else in my experience. Less and less do I care for the immediate offence and its nature; more and more do I watch with apprehension and concern the reaction of the boy and his parents to the punishment imposed.

After not quite thirty years of intimate dealings with boys, I have reached the point where, among the thousands of boys I have been privileged to meet, it is possible to test the truth or falsity of many of my theories; for many of these boys are men now, and the effects of those earlier experiences are indelibly stamped on their lives and characters. Among those whom I am gladdest to meet, and who most frequently welcome me with sincerest expressions of friendship and good-will, are the boys whom, in the days of their youth, it was my duty to discipline. Always I hear the same story: "I couldn't see it straight at the time and I didn't realize what it meant; but the best thing that ever happened to me was the time when I received the punishment that was due me for my offences, and learned not only the presence of weaknesses within but the necessity of overcoming them if I was to be a man. I owe more to the discipline which the school administered to me than to any other influence in my life." It is a remark which, in substance at least, I have heard again and again from the lips of old boys.

This does not mean that discipline should be administered to those who do not deserve it, but it does mean that, when deserved, it is generally the one remedy that will correct and strengthen. Incidents to prove this could be supplied in abundance. Let me give only one or two.

An outburst of youthful enthusiasm had once reached rather dangerous proportions and had developed suddenly a symptom of mob spirit which boded ill. It was necessary to resort to somewhat drastic masures to convince an excited student body that law and order still prevailed. Several boys were summarily dismissed. For the moment the excitement only increased and restlessness was everywhere apparent. Fancied grievances prompted a few hot-heads to start for home as an expression of sympathy with their mates who had been dismissed. Some thought it wise to advise their parents in advance. One who did so received this prompt and disconcerting telegram in reply: "Come home; go to the back door; let the cook feed you; then go to work." I learned afterwards that the substance of this message, which the troubled youth had rashly conveyed to his friends, speedily became known among the hot-heads of the group, and did more to restore sanity and quiet than all the efforts of the faculty combined.

On this same occasion two boys whose older brother had been dismissed, made up their minds to leave. They had gone only a short distance from the school when it was discovered that there were not funds enough available to complete the home journey. A telegram was sent to the father, stating the facts and asking for money. The father replied that he would meet them in person and bring them all the money required. In due season he arrived, giving no evidence of his real attitude in the matter. Quietly he said to his impetuous sons: "I suppose you left rather hurriedly and there must be some cleaning-up to do. Suppose we go back to Andover and straighten things out." Arriving in Andover, he asked, "Have you said anything to the principal about your plans?" "No," was the reply. "Don't you think we had better call on him and explain matters before you go?" "Yes," came the brief but enthusiastic response.

A little later the trio appeared at my office. I looked the father over and I confess to apprehensions. He was a splendid type of American citizen, well over six feet in height and of magnificent physical proportions. I knew that he had always taken special pride in maintaining his youthful spirits and interests with his boys, and that when the ice left the Hudson River near their home each spring he was accustomed to swim across and back, with the boys tagging at his heels, to show that he was still young in spirit and vigor. I regretted the possibility of losing his esteem and good-will.

He closed the door and then turned to his boys. "I understand," he said quietly, "that you boys think you ought to leave school because your brother has been expelled." Two nodding heads gave their unqualified assent to this declaration. "Well," added the father with a smile, "you are not going to leave school. You are going to stay here and redeem the family name, that is, if my money holds out and the faculty are willing. And," he added with some feeling, "I want to tell you this, and I want to say it in the presence of Mr. Stearns, if Bill had not been expelled for what he has done, you would not have had to call on me for money to get you home. I would have come up here myself and taken you home. You would never have been permitted to stay in a school that would overlook an offence of that kind and extend leniency to a boy who had proved himself so ungrateful for what he has secured here. Now go back to your work, and remember that you are to reestablish the good name of your family in this old school." He stepped forward to the desk and extended his hand in a warm and friendly grip, leaving the office with two disillusioned and downcast boys following at his heels.

The boys remained in the school and completed their courses with credit. They left, carrying with them the good-will and esteem of students and faculty alike. But the most interesting development in the situation was the final effect on the boy who had been subjected to punishment and forced to sever the school connections. In his case the reaction came much sooner than it does with most. Among all the boys of my acquaintance, I know of none who developed a more loyal and enthusiastic interest in the school than did he. His enthusiasm indeed became so unbounded that he was made secretary of the Academy's largest Alumni Association. During his brief term of office he more than doubled its enrollment. When he came back to the school, as he sometimes did, he did not hesitate to bring his bag to my door and make my home his headquarters,---a rather unusual occurrence when a boy has only recently left the school halls, and when some of his friends at least are still there. Again and again before his untimely death that boy would tell me with deepest feeling of what that deserved discipline had meant in his life. "It set me thinking," he said; "showed me that I was drifting and didn't know it. It gave me the clue which turned me right-about-face. Whatever progress I have made, or whatever success I attain, will date from that time. Had the offence been overlooked, I might have become a worthless good-for-nothing."

I mentioned this incident at one of our alumni dinners recently. At the close of the banquet, and after most of the group had left, a young fellow called me aside. "What you said to-night," he began, "gave me just the courage I needed to say something to you that has been on my mind for the last six years." He spoke with evident feeling.

"Do you remember the conditions under which I had to leave school?" he asked.

I had to admit that my memory on that point was a bit hazy.

"Well," he continued with commendable frankness, " I was fired for stealing. How I happened to do it I don't know. But I did; and I was caught, thank God! When I left, you told me that my future would all hinge on the way I took my medicine; that if I admitted to myself that I deserved all that came to me in the way of punishment, and perhaps more, I would have a basis on which to make a fresh and clean start; but that if I didn't, I would probably end in jail. I never forgot that," he added with a smile, "and here's the record I have been wanting to show you. I slipped it in my pocket when I left home to-night, thinking that I might be able to screw up my courage to show it to you. But I would not have had the nerve to produce it if it had not been for that story you told. That hit me square."

He drew from his pocket a package of papers. I looked at them with keen interest. First there were reports from a well-known college, covering the full four-year course. The marks were all A's and B's; and the misdemeanor column was absolutely clean. Several comments indicated work and aptitude of an exceptionally high order. A couple of letters from business firms for whom he had worked since leaving college testifled in terms of unqualified praise to his reliability and faithfulness.

"I learned my lesson, and I've made good," he said with a show of pride, "and I wanted you to know it. But," he added quietly and in a serious tone, "if I had not been caught and received the jolt that dismissal from school gave me, heaven only knows what might have become of me."

Why it is that parents are so seldom able to appreciate this truth, so plainly evident to those who deal constantly with youth, is a puzzle which I have never been able to solve. Parents who refuse to allow deserved punishment to fall are evidently prompted to take their untenable position through the fear of losing the good-will and affection of their children. The passing frown or trembling lip inspired by the fear of pain carry more weight and exert a more deadening influence than all the possibilities or certainties of the more serious troubles that are still in store, and that could generally be avoided if deserved discipline were allowed to play its proper part. And the very thing that these misguided parents fail so completely to understand is that their doubtful attitude is inviting that very loss of affection and esteem, for the years to come at least, which they so deeply dread. It is easy enough to distinguish, even in school days, between those boys who have been pampered and favored at home and those who have been blessed with parents of sanity and courage; between those whose parents value more highly the smile of the passing moment than the stable character of later years, and those who face bravely the discomfort of the moment in the assurance that maturity at least will bring to those unsteady youths the appreciation of real values and, in the end, their undying affection and esteem.

The very attitude of boys towards their fathers and mothers, the terms in which they speak of them, will regularly tell the tale. "The old man" and "the old woman" are terms always used by the former group; "father" and "mother" belong to the latter. And when those unequaled words---" father" and "mother "---are spoken with reverence and respect, one can rest assured that that fortunate boy has not missed in his home the stern hand of discipline when discipline was needed for his own upbuilding.

The subject of discipline is one of such vital significance to our modern life in general that I cannot confine my discussion of it to the realms of the home alone. It deserves and will receive special consideration later.

IT is difficult to disassociate the home from religion. The true home is based on religion. Its very atmosphere must of necessity be spiritual. It is created and sustained by those unseen but immensely real qualities of the human soul that exist only in the realms of the spirit,---love, honor, reverence, service, sacrifice. And it is on these abstract realities that religion rests.

In the development of civilization religion has played a commanding part. Without its influence the human race could never have attained all that to-day, through the benefits of civilization, it counts most precious and most satisfying.

For centuries religion has exercised its potent influence on youth, checking the baser impulse, restraining from the evil and unworthy deed, strengthening in the moment of temptation, and always calling into expression and fuller control the best and noblest in human character.

It is common to speak of youth as irreligious. Nothing could be further from the truth. But youth has not cast its religion into cold dogma and forbidding creed. To dogma youth is utterly impervious. Creeds to it are meaningless. Formal religion not only makes scant appeal but frequently repels. But the fundamentals of religion revealed by Christ and lived by Him awaken always in the heart of a youth, even though he may be unconscious of their true significance, a definite and often compelling response. In the ordinary interpretation of the term religion probably played little part in the appeal to which those Yale boys so bravely responded; yet it was the spiritual appeal alone, as it spoke in the voice of duty, that called them back from safety and asked them to give their all; and, without exception, every boy in that university, and every y who later heard the story, acclaimed the deed and bowed his head in reverence before those who had climbed and attained the pinnacle of spiritual grandeur.

If my daily contacts with boys did not convince me that youth is at heart religious, an experience of my own college days would do so. It was my rare privilege during those impressionable years to sit in the classroom of one of the greatest teachers who has ever filled a college chair, Charles E. Garman, professor of philosophy in Amherst College. Mr. Garman combined a wonderfully keen intellect with a deep and genuine spiritual nature; and he had besides an unusual power to interest and inspire his pupils. His class in philosophy, covering the last two years of the college course, was known as the hardest course in the entire curriculum; yet it was elected by all but two or three of the class of which I was a member,

It was Mr. Garman's custom to lead his class through the various systems of philosophy as they had developed during the passing centuries, forcing us to imbibe their spirit and, so far as possible, to believe with all our hearts in the truth of the doctrines on which they rested, until, after constant debate, argument, and thought, we were forced to recognize their fallacies and were prepared to take the next forward step.

Nothing could equal the deep and intense interest of that group of college boys. Discussion never stopped with the classroom. It went on everywhere. Mr. Garman's study, a mile from the campus, gathered within its walls every night a group of eager students, and the battle was continued till the late hour called us back to our rooms. Frequently small groups would slip from their fraternity houses in the early morning hours, and, stretched under shady trees or roaming the countryside, would renew the struggle to understand the great and eternal problems of human life and the human soul that we had come to feel were the most important and the only real things in the world.

The class met during the last hour of the morning session, and it was our program to go from it direct to dinner. The closing bell would ring, but no one would stir. With a smile on his face, Mr. Garman, to whom this was no new experience, would say quietly: "Gentlemen, the bell has rung. I am willing to go on if you desire, but I wish no one to stay under compulsion." And none left. The class would go on, fifteen minutes, a half hour, sometimes three-quarters of an hour beyond the closing bell. Far from protesting, those boys welcomed as a rare privilege this added opportunity to wrestle, under the leadership of a master-mind, with the great problems that concern the human soul. Dinners grew cold and often were swept from tables by irate boarding-house keepers; but no one cared. Underclassmen dubbed us crazy and shook their heads in amused contempt at our seeming inability to place the customary emphasis on the commonplace topics of student discussion.

If we were deemed crazy during the early months of this unusual course, we must have seemed hopeless lunatics to our mates as we neared its end. For the philosophical peak we had been so laboriously ascending during all those months we found to be crowned with the Atonement of Christ Himself. During those never-to-be-forgotten days the atmosphere became charged with a veritable spiritual electricity. We seemed to move in a new world in which the ordinary interests of student life became wholly inconsequential. The fact that the most important ball game of the year was scheduled for the afternoon would be almost forgotten; and the noon meal, if we were fortunate enough to find one waiting for us, furnished only a further opportunity to continue the discussions begun in the morning's recitation hour. Several of us were members of the college ball-nine that spring, and I shall never forget the feelings akin to resentment with which we faced the necessity of missing occasional classes in order to play scheduled games away from home with rival college teams. Under the leadership and inspiration of a master-teacher we were dealing at first hand with the great facts of religion and the spiritual world, and in terms that had meaning to the minds of youth. And that experience was the most exhilarating and satisfying we had ever known.

The more modern teacher of philosophy, reveling in the cold abstractions of agnosticism, has never been able to evoke an enthusiasm of this kind.

By a curious coincidence the administration of the college at just this time was in the hands of one who was inclined somewhat to excesses in his outward and formal religious life. With sincere apprehension he noted the falling off in the attendance at college prayer-meetings of those who he believed were coming under dangerous influences and were seemingly losing their religion. We were clearly under suspicion. But remonstrances proved of no avail. The college prayer-meeting never seemed less attractive. Even the regular church service seemed to lack something vital and real. Probably we were a bit conceited and unduly critical. Yet we were clearly conscious that in that classroom in philosophy we were dealing at closer range with the great truths of life, as the minds and hearts of youth are given to interpret those truths, than could ever have been possible in the prayer-meeting and the church. And yet, of that class of only seventy-odd men, seventeen, if I remember correctly, elected the ministry as their life calling, while the rest, whatever their choice of profession, faced the world with a new and compelling consciousness of the sacredness of human life, of the proximity and reality of the spiritual world, and of man's duty and privilege through a life of service to aid his Creator in the carrying-out of the divine plan.

No, youth at heart is anything but irreligious. But as youth approaches manhood its religious interest will wane or grow just in so far as the influences and surroundings to which it is subjected are benumbing or stimulating. To-day they are chiefly of the former kind. Mr. Garman himself, during the last years of his work, admitted that he had found it necessary to reshape somewhat the character of his course, and to emphasize the sociological and economic rather than the spiritual elements in human life, in order to meet the changed attitude of the student mind. In other words, the deadening influences of an increasingly irreligious age had already checked the natural growth of that religious interest which is found always in the heart of youth.

But what has in part disappeared from the lives of the maturer youth of college years is still found among those a bit younger. Preachers regularly accustomed to fill college and school pulpits unite in testifying to the fact that the schoolboy audience is far the more responsive of the two. Any one who has looked into the faces of five or six hundred boys, when some preacher who has a real message is addressing them, and has seen those faces merge into one solid phalanx of an eager and responsive whole when some deep and vital religious truth is eloquently touched upon, needs no further assurance that youth is at heart religious.

All the more, then, must we deplore the loss from our modern life of those vital and stimulating influences that lie at the basis of human character, and that, through the passing years, have so strongly aided youth in carrying out its noblest impulses and realizing its highest aspirations.

We cannot easily estimate the real values of religious ideals and influences in our own lives, yet those influences have always been at work.

The Church has played its part, incompletely and hesitatingly no doubt, and yet offering us the restraint of fear and condemnation for wrongdoing, and the appeal to nobler thinking and cleaner living. The old-time home, cooperating to the full, has seen to it that the recognition of God as a present and potent force in human life should be definitely acknowledged, and the fear of God instilled in youthful hearts. Whatever the broader and more tolerant thought of later years may have brought in the way of gain, only a fool can be blind enough to ignore the constant and powerful influence that religion has exerted on western Christian civilization.

To-day that influence has been sadly undermined. In the lives of many of our youth it has ceased almost wholly to exist. It is the constant complaint of the Church that youth no longer responds to its attractions and appeal. In the home the outward manifestations of religion, at least, have largely disappeared. To most of our boys and girls to-day the Bible has become practically a closed book. Family prayers, so common in times past, and even the simple request for God's blessing on the daily meal, are almost unknown. Under the requirements of law the teaching of religion, and frequently even the simplest religious exercises, are debarred from our public schools. Religion, at least in its outward manifestations, has been steadily relegated to the scrap-heaps of the past.

With this almost complete disappearance of the outward manifestations of religious belief it is not to be wondered at that youth should find little in the Church and other formal religious activities to appeal to its inner spiritual nature. Youth does not even fully understand what the Church stands for, or just what it means. To youth the Church seems to be chiefly concerned with the trivial and inconsequential, and to ignore the great and fundamental spiritual verities of which youth is dimly conscious, and to the challenges of which in great emergencies youth invariably responds.

A father, himself a minister, has voiced to me the common feeling of pessimism over the seeming lack of religious interest among the youth of the present day.

"Everything," he writes, "is there except one thing. These boys have deep feeling and a strong loyalty. But organized religion leaves them cold. It doesn't represent their vital interests or express their most sacred emotions. Yet I should say they were religious-minded. From the Church point of view they are wasted. They have been reading a book I am soon to publish---with sympathy and agreement, but somehow the Church doesn't interpret them. It's a great question."

Yes, it is a great question, indeed,---a question so great as to demand our keenest and most unbiased thought.

Major-General Leonard Wood expressed to me not long ago his strong conviction that if, as he had often been told, the American youth of to-day, as contrasted with the youth of former years, were losing their religious interest, the fact must be accepted as evidence of the beginning of our national decay.

This is strong language, but, I think, not too strong.

We must bear in mind, however, that there is a distinct difference between active religious interest and being still at heart religious. The latter is the natural endowment with which we are all blessed by our Creator. For the former we ourselves are chiefly responsible; and if the youth of the present day has lost its religious interest, it is because of the conditions and influences with which it has been surrounded, and for these we of an older generation must bear the blame.

What has caused the loss of this vital element in our American life? And why is it that the American people as a whole are so indifferent to a loss of such sinister significance?

A complete answer to these very natural questions cannot easily be given. But it can be fairly stated that the materialistic spirit of the age in which we live has exerted its deadening influence on all that is not purely practical and utilitarian. Spiritual values find no place in such a scheme of thought, and spiritual interests have been largely supplanted by interests of a more material kind. Men of calibre and vision, be they statesmen or leaders in the business world, are not blind to the truth. But for men of smaller mould the pace of the material world has been a bit too fast of late. The wine of material success has befuddled their senses. The wonderful advances in the realms of applied science which have ministered to their physical comfort and ease have undermined their sanity and sadly warped their judgments. For the moment, at least, they have lost their bearings.

The standard by which success is measured is no longer the standard of character and moral worth, but that of financial standing and material achievement.

Material prosperity invariably breeds a spirit of selfishness and of iconoclasm, and it is this spirit, so rampant to-day, that leads men to look with contempt on all that is associated with the past. Puffed with conceit, they seem prone to believe that for them alone, a type of superman almost, a generous Fate has reserved these so recently discovered secrets of science by which the material wealth of the world has been so suddenly and so enormously increased, and by which their physical life has been made so much smoother. This curious attitude of mind has spread through all classes, and has created an atmosphere in which the youth of to-day, still seeing its visions and still eager to realize them, finds scant encouragement or help. Especially in the home this sinister atmosphere works on the mind and heart of youth similar to a numbing poison.

This strange mental attitude of the successful man of affairs is constantly reflected in letters written by fathers about their boys and their school work. Let me quote briefly from two.

"I cannot afford at my time of life," writes this visionless materialist, "to have my boy waste any time in studying the Bible, because it is my intention that he shall adopt some useful occupation."

The "useful occupation," so commonly measured in the American mind by the standard of the dollar, cannot include in the minds of men of this type anything which deals with the higher and spiritual values in human nature and that is not thoroughly and entirely practical.

Writing about his boy's course of study, another father says:

"I do not want any Latin, history, or grammar. The boy might, if he has time, take English literature . . . . I must have him develop along the lines I have indicated, not a lot of instruction that will do him no good in after life. We cannot afford to waste our time in that way in these days."

"In these days." These wonderful days in which we poor humans have suddenly been thrust to such heights that we can learn nothing from the teachings of history, when the correct use of the mother tongue can be safely dispensed with, and when for limited recreation, if time can be found in our mechanical life, we may just glimpse the struggles, the hopes, the aspirations of the human mind and soul as they have found expression through the passing centuries in literature.

If these sentiments represented only the opinions of the individuals who uttered them, we might well afford to smile. Unfortunately they represent the character and scope of the limited thinking of a great mass of our American people to-day. No better proof of this fact can be found than in the recent election to the senatorship of a great state and the threatened candidacy for the high office of President of the United States of two successful materialists who have publicly and blatantly announced their contempt for education and sound learning. Not all are equally frank in voicing their views, but their lives and actions and votes place them in one and the same class. And this is far from humorous,---it is tragic. We are reminded of the famous saying of Bishop Berkeley uttered many years ago: "Whatever the world thinks, he who has not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the Summum Bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will certainly make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman."

Fortunately the race has never been dependent upon human earthworms for constructive thought and leadership. Real leaders have first risen above the mud of materialism. And when earthworms have rashly ventured to leave their allotted home they have generally in the end shriveled and died, or, at best, become food for fishes that swim in the waters beneath and birds that soar in the heavens above the earth. However sadly outnumbered, those who, in the world's history, have saved civilization from threatened disaster and pointed it to the higher levels of life, have always been made of tougher and finer stuff. To-day, in our hour of need, there are increasing evidences that such leadership is again to be supplied.

The World War did not bring us the Utopia that we desired and hoped for. It seemed only to leave us chaos. But that chaos has set us thinking, and our thought is carrying us more and more away from the material world and back to the realms of the spirit and religion. Appeals for the restoration of religion in our national life are steadily increasing in volume and strength. They are coming, too, chiefly from those in positions of real leadership in public, professional, and business life. Our late President Harding in several of his public addresses pleaded earnestly for a return of old-fashioned religion in our national life. I quote from one of these:

"In spite of our complete divorcement of Church and State, quite in harmony with our religious freedom, there is an important relationship between Church and Nation, because no nation can prosper, no nation can survive, if it ever forgets Almighty God. I have believed that religious reverence has played a very influential and helpful part in the matchless American achievement, and I wish it ever to abide. If I were to utter a prayer for the republic to-night, it would be to reconsecrate us in religious devotion and make us abidingly a God-fearing, God-loving people."

President Coolidge has frequently sounded the same note. The Secretary of War has very recently made a similar plea. A very unusual and significant editorial article appeared only a few weeks ago in the Manufacturer's Record of Baltimore, Maryland. I venture to quote from it at some length:

Judge Gary, at the annual meeting of the American Iron and Steel Institute, made an address which is probably one of the most remarkable ever delivered before a business meeting of that kind in this or any other country. It was devoted almost wholly to the subject of religion and to the Bible, urging the members of the Institute to study the Bible and to follow its teachings.

Judge Gary had recently returned from a trip to Palestine and other Eastern countries. Evidently the spirit that hovers over Palestine, and the thoughts that must flood the soul of every intelligent man who visits that country, were still making their deep impress upon him when, in his address, he stressed over and above everything else the supreme importance of the Bible as the guide for the individual man and for the nation.

One of the most remarkable movements ever known in the history of this country, and perhaps in the history of all countries, is the broadening interest in the study of the Bible and in the preaching of Christianity in offices, in shops, and from editorial chairs. Never in our experience has there been such a universal discussion and unceasing endorsement of Christianity in the newspapers of the country as is seen to-day. Hundreds of the leading daily papers of all sections are constantly publishing editorials about Christianity, many of them matching anything which is heard from the pulpit. A number of daily papers are publishing the Bible as a serial, giving a chapter day by day. Hundreds are publishing one or two Bible texts every day. Business men everywhere are, to a greater extent than we have ever seen before, emphasizing the supreme importance of religion; and to-day one who reads widely would probably see references to the necessity of the Golden Rule in business a hundred times more frequently than in former years.

Judge Gary's splendid address only serves to bring out more clearly the fact that great business organizations composed of the foremost men of America are recognizing that, over and above all else in this world, the teachings of the Bible must be the supreme guide of mankind, even in business matters, if the world is to be saved from the turmoil and chaos of the hour.

These are truly hopeful signs. But they are still only signs. If the need which these thoughtful leaders so clearly recognize is to be met, and the hopes which they voice are to be realized, the responsibility rests squarely on every loyal American citizen to scan his own record and to contribute his individual share to the restoration of the crumbling foundations of our national life.

WHAT are we offering our boys and girls of this modern age in place of what has been lost? What are the influences that are moulding lives and shaping characters, and that are to determine the quality of the manhood and womanhood of to-morrow?

It is pretty commonly agreed, I think, that the most wide-spread, if not the most potent, influence at work upon our young people to-day is found in the movies and the stage. The movies, at least, were unknown to earlier generations. The stage had little contact with plastic youth, subjected to the influence of old-fashioned homes where there regularly existed an attitude of misgiving towards everything and every one connected with the theatre. But the boys and girls of the present generation find here their greatest and most constant source of amusement and relaxation. Daily the movies minister to the supposed wants of hundreds of thousands of our children, rich and poor, north, south, east, and west. Surely we cannot wisely ignore the character of such an influence making itself felt, as this does, directly and constantly on the minds and souls of impressionable youth.

With all its wonderful possibilities for good, and in spite of the good it sometimes does accomplish, this recent addition to the life of the world has yet to prove that its total effect has been anything but harmful, and immensely harmful at that. If parents were still in control, and would exercise their discretion and judgment as to the pictures and plays that their children might see, we might view the situation more calmly. But parents are not often in control, and, when they are, they appear to have lost all sense of proportion and judgment. It is the youngsters themselves who decide, and the decision is based neither on experience nor judgment, but on impulse---and an impulse most often resulting from an appeal to the weakest in human nature.

There can be no doubt that one of the strongest appeals that the movies make, and with very evident intent, relates to the irregularities of human life, the extravagances in human action, and the unnatural in human relationships. The sex appeal is almost always present and blatant. No matter what the individual film may be or the individual program arranged, it is almost impossible to sit through a movie show without suddenly and unexpectedly confronting this appeal either in the announced film or in a special film added to those advertised on the regular program. The stage has followed much the same line, until one has to search long to find a play which does not, somewhere in its course, bring to one's cheeks the blush of shame.

Not long ago I read in an issue of The Farm Journal an article of timely and vigorous protest. The writer, Mr. John B. Wallace, collected at random a list of some of the films that were at the time enjoying exceptional popularity on the screen throughout the land. A glance at the titles alone is enough. Here are a few:

Why Trust Your Husband?; The Fruits of Desire; The Woman of Pleasure; His Temporary Wife; Playthings of Passion; My Husband's Other Wife; A Bachelor's Children; Experimental Marriage; The Flame of Passion; My Unmarried Wife; Sex Lure; Flames of the Flesh; Lawless Love; When Men Desire; His Bridal Night; The Evil Women Do; For Husbands Only.

With commendable frankness and courage Mr. Wallace truthfully says:

Countless thousands of people can and do stay away from the movies, going only when a particular picture is shown that they know, by the reputation of the author or producer, will not insult either their intelligence or their deceny. Thousands more find such pictures so rare that they never go. Yet there are other countless thousands who will and do take their places; and it is these pathetic audiences, helplessly swallowing all the drivel and nasty sex stuff that is flung at them, that support the motion-picture business to-day.

The comedy is in many ways more dangerous to young people than the serious dramas, and especially to small children. The theatres that cater to the patronage of children realize that their audiences are not interested in dramatic productions, and therefore, for their benefit, exhibit action pictures and comedies. Children are naturally fun-loving and have a keen sense of the ridiculous. Even little tots of four and five years will get a laugh out of the antics of a screen comedian. Consequently, the association of policemen and clergymen in ridiculous rôles early breeds a disrespect which it is almost impossible for parental teaching and explanation to offset.

Furthermore, the comedies are the worst offenders when it comes to appealing to sex instincts. Some of the situations border very closely upon obscenity. Very few comedies of the popular type lack a bedroom scene, a disrobing act, or a bevy of young women who have taken off all the clothes they dare. At least the sex dramas of the serious picture plays attempt to prove something, but the comedies drag in the sex thrill without the shadow of an excuse, except the cash value of catering to the worst passions of the boys and men in the audience.

The other day I picked up a copy of the Police Gazette. I can distinctly recall the time when a grown man would feel inclined to blush if caught glancing through this periodical. But after a decade of motion-picture comedies the Gazette seemed to me strangely tame and innocuous. It is much the same with books. Novels that are kept under lock and key in private libraries lest the children get hold of them, and that can only be obtained upon request by adults at the public libraries, are dramatized and thrown on the screen in all their details. If any portion is expurgated it is only in fear of state censors or police regulations.

When producers delve into the past for material, as they are obliged to do more and more, the whole history of mankind is open to them---the most stirring and dramatic events, the most tender of love stories, the most hair-raising adventures. And what do they select? Invariably the ugliest and most salacious episodes of history, something that has "a little spice." And then they bear down with all possible weight on the spicy portions.

But why go on? Can any sane person, not unmindful of the days of his own youth, accept for a moment the belief that plastic and impressionable boys and girls, who have not yet fully gained their self-control, and whose hardest fights in the days of youth must always be against physical temptation, can remain uninfluenced by the constant admission to their minds of such vicious poison as this? If one were to accept as true the teachings of the screen, it would be necessary to believe that the home of ideals and purity is practically non-existent, that virtue in man and woman is altogether a novelty, that ministers and those who profess religion are cowardly hypocrites, and that the real attractions of life are to be found in the wanton violation of those old standards of morality and long-tested human relationships which have stood for centuries as the secure foundations of western and Christian civilization.

The tendencies of the teachings of the movies have their counterpart in the literature of the day. The best sellers among the novels are those which deal with the same hackneyed theme. The more extravagant, the more blatant the portrayal of domestic infelicity and human irregularities, the wider the market. Many of the best magazines have in a measure yielded to this tendency, while our news-stands are fairly flooded with cheap magazines, the very titles of which make clear their character, and which carry stories many of which would not have been tolerated by the public, even if they had been permitted by law, only a few years ago.

A well-known monthly magazine, which boasts of an impressive circulation, and which has never been averse to catering to the weaker side of human nature, not long ago published a serial story of the familiar and extravagant modern type.. The first installment left little unsaid, and the advertising it was given was widespread and noisy.

A mother chanced to be visiting her son at the time, and picked up a copy of the magazine in her boy's room. She glanced through the opening chapters of the story with increasing apprehension, noted th suggestiveness of the pictures adorning the pages, and then in unfeigned distress brought the magazine to me.

"How dare they publish such stuff?" she said excitedly. "It's enough to corrupt any boy."

And it was.

A month later the proprietor of a local newsstand sent for me. The monthly issue of the magazine in question had just appeared, carrying the second installment of the offensive story. With it had come three hundred roughly printed sheets containing a reprint of the opening chapters. A note of explanation from the publishers stated frankly, and with evident pride, that there had been an overwhelming demand for the previous issue, a demand prompted by the widespread interest the story had aroused, and which they had not been able to supply. They added that it had seemed to them wise to reprint the opening chapters for distribution among the purchasers of the later issue of the magazine, in order that they might thus be enabled to follow the complete story; and they ventured the guess that three hundred copies would probably be sufficient for local needs.

The significance of this incident should be at once apparent. And yet I have frequently seen copies of this same magazine in the homes of people supposed to be eminently respectable and enjoying the esteem and confidence of the public. The fact is that the restraints ordinarily imposed on immature youth in the matter of reading have been withdrawn, even in the home, as they have been in relation to the stage. Yet the influence of the written word on the youthful mind is impressive and lasting.