matter, through that much-quoted corollary, "Children should not be allowed to have their own way." We have tried to show in succeeding pages that when children are seeming to merit this reproachful characterization, they are not really trying to have their own way. They are trying to have our way. They have no "own way," in fact. In the last analysis their way always our way. Even in being averse to carrying out direct commands, the child is having our way in the very manner we have imparted it to him.

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In general, it is somebody else's ideas that the child is trying to carry out when he is said to be having his own way. He is only using his own mind in having your way. His impulse to do so is no more reprehensible than his impulse to breathe, or eat, or use his own hands. It is simply living on his own account that he instinctively wishes.

Two children were playing in our home last winter. The occupation was making paper boats, at which the older boy was somewhat of an expert. The younger one could not do so well, though he worked just as earnestly and was most jealous of the privilege of making the boats "all himself." When the boats were placed in fleets upon the floor, which did duty as an ocean, the

older boy who could make almost perfect boats destroyed the boats of the younger child and would have proceeded to make him some more had not the storm of anger and grief precipitated by the destruction of the boats put an end to the play. When the "powers that be" were called in consultation, the older child said that he only destroyed the little fellow's boats because he wanted to make him some better ones. And he was very honest and earnest in asserting over and over again that "he didn't see why he should be blamed for that." In vain we tried to show him that the privilege of making the boats was more to the little fellow than the having of them. He was not more obtuse in being unable to see this than many other would-be benefactors in positions of authority (having advantage by reason of superior strength) have been.

In Mr. Gladstone's famous speech of 1886, by which he introduced a Home Rule Bill into Parliament, he refers to past transactions with some of Great Britain's dependencies. Says Mr. Gladstone: "England tried to pass good laws for the colonies of that period, but the colonies said, 'We do not want your good laws; we want

We do not need to dwell upon the universal recognition that is accorded to this principle at

this time. It is our avowed excuse for entering the great war. We say that we will help to defeat the purpose of the Kaiser to rule the world! Yet why should we defeat it? Have we any reason to suppose that Father Wilhelm would have wished to rule other than beneficently? Has he not brought prosperity and plenty to Germany? Has not science flourished there as nowhere else? Has not art and education been richly endowed? Yes, but we say that we do not want German Kultur, even though it be better than our own. We do not want German efficiency, German economy. We want to attain these things in our own way. We want to work out our own national salvation. We do not want Germany's good laws, we want our own good laws. What we are saying as a nation about this matter is quite right. The writer is simply pleading for an extension of the principle of democracy to that sphere of life, the exclusion from which will only make democracy anywhere else a mockery and a pretense.

We cannot win democracy for the world by the use of arms. We must make it a state of brain tissue. Great educators have realized this for some time. They have tried in some quarters to reorganize the public school system, so that it might deal consistently with the essentials of education, rather than solely with its minutiæ.

Norman Hapgood, the biographer, writes of how Lincoln, upon one occasion, in the name of his law firm, declined to undertake business that to the ordinary lawyer would have seemed perfectly legitimate and desirably lucrative. "We are not real estate agents; we are lawyers. Mr. So-and-So is a man whom the Lord has made on purpose for your business." So wrote Lincoln, indicating in his subtly humorous way his opinion, that he whose mind was preoccupied with principles of equity and justice, should not be confounded with the man who was pleased to spend his time copying and filing papers, sealing them with green seals and tying them with red tape.

There have been men who, feeling the dignity of another great profession, have said in effect, "We are educators-those who lead forth the human mind." They have stood aloof from the hucksters and shopkeepers of the school system, those who think that to hustle children through a requisite number of grades in a required length of time is education, and that to fuss and putter, and pitter patter around about "methods" is further proof that children are being educated.

What is it that stands in the way of that education which is a true unfolding, and which in

sures the love of knowledge, knowledge that is desired and sought and found, and which stimulates to more desiring and seeking and finding? It is not alone the instigators and promoters of the new "experiments" who covet for the child a larger freedom, and many an earnest teacher is struggling under the handicap of the older "systems" to give it to him. What is it that makes the small, exacting disciplinarian, with his prying and spying, his little criticism, his petty judgments, and his senseless punishments, still necessary? It is because the child has been deprived of making his own adjustments, and has been stimulated to certain "duties" by means of discipline until he waits for the accustomed stimulusurging, punishment, or whatever it is as a matter of course. The will of another, instead of his own initiative, starts him toward performance. Instead of redirecting his own misdirected energy (mistakes, misdemeanors), he waits for the inevitable punishment to inhibit his restless mood. One mother told the writer that her boy "got a spell every so often, when he was just spoiling for a whipping, and after he had had it he was a good boy for a long time." Presumably the nervous system might get in the habit of reacting to a whipping as an itching skin to the "scratching" that allays the irritation. One who has a