right to his opinion said of the plan indicated in Chapter Two: "I hardly think this would be applicable to a ten-year-old who had been under the old régime all his life." Of course not! We are sadly aware that it is not! The average child turned loose does not know what to do with liberty, at school or anywhere else. He begins immediately to infringe upon the liberty of another as his own liberty has been infringed upon. He is so poor in resources which draw upon the constructive instinct that to fall into some crude mischief at the instigation of another is for him the path of least resistance. He is fast reaching the state when it is easier to boss, or be bossed, than to carry out intelligent constructive plans of

his own.

This child is on the way to man's estate, and as a nation we are committed to the theory of government that makes it every man's duty to be able to intelligently plan and execute for himself. If he is not such an individual, his acquiescence in a democracy is not different from his acquiescence in an autocracy. He is merely a tool for those who would use him, or so much dead weight to be carried. A free nation must be an aggregate of free and friendly men, each unit by reason of its plastic strength giving poise and strength to the whole.

We may go forth to destroy autocracy by means of armies and navies, but it is only a semblance that we destroy. The thing itself is quickly rehabilitated, as in France after the Revolution. We cannot defeat the disposition to rule despotically by refusing to be ruled. We may defeat it by refusing to rule. Nations may refuse to rule other nations. The nation may say to its own citizens: "We cannot have poor dependents, a drag upon the body politic. We cannot take so much trouble for you poor incompetents as to be continually directing your activities. You must learn to direct yourselves."

We may defeat autocracy by building up a true democracy, a free, strong, happy people, acting in unison upon fundamental principles of right! And reacting in a variety of differing ways upon their environment, in terms of industry and art and science.

Autocracy is the disposition to interfere with the liberty of another. We may defeat it at its source by refusing to interfere with the liberty of children. We may not make "for his own good" an excuse for interfering with the child, since we are finding out how to provide for his "good" in a less dangerous way, that of creating a good environment for him.

We shall have democracy, then, when we shall

allow the child free self-expression in an environment suggestive of social ideals, and when we give him the chance to acquire self-control.

And to whom shall we turn, in behalf of these fundamental rights of the child, but to mothers in particular, and to women in general, many of whom are demanding for themselves a full share in democracy.

We desire for our sex all possible emancipation, but most of all we would like to see women free from certain ideas that help to hold in bondage the finer instincts of motherhood.

The habit of thought that, in this connection, confuses the average mother's sense of values, is that of letting the childless home become a criterion for the home where there are children. The fashion of these homes should be as distinct and unlike as the fashion of homes in different ages and different climates. What is quite proper to the one is wholly improper to the other. No doubt the time will come when houses will be built especially for families with children. There may be grace of architecture, and beauty of interior design, as Prof. C. Hanford Henderson has suggested, but there will be in those houses no shining polished surfaces, no fragile ornaments, no dainty fabrics to make naughty boys and girls, where there are only naturally active children.

г

It is nothing less than tragic, to see a young mother of young children struggling to preserve order throughout a mass of miscellaneous impedimenta, and worrying over what people will think of her as a housekeeper. Pieces of pottery, rugs, and bric-a-brac must abide undisturbed, regardless of the expanding ingenuity, and developing inventiveness of the little child. Inanimate things are given precedence over beautiful abounding life. The needs of the living child are made subservient to the dead and stiffened routine of household custom.

To be able to arrange a house tastefully and to produce pleasing effects is a desirable accomplishment, but for a mother to feel humiliated, because she cannot do this is comparable to the humiliation of the biologist at the Agricultural Experiment Station, because he does not milk the COWS. It is comparable to the humiliation of a Bishop, over the fact that he does not sweep the Church.

"He is just old enough to be getting into mischief," says the young mother, and she regards this period as one to be endured, and its ravages prevented if possible, and so in the first six years of a child's life, the mother tries to destroy the initiative and power of self-direction, that the "new educators" seek to restore in the next sixteen.

In the reconstruction of our ideas about babies, we shall learn to hail the troublesome period as the dawn of a great promise. The little child's faith in his own powers is not repulsed, and his efforts to partake of the activity of the world, are encouraged as the first tender shoots of a precious plant are given protection. He is allowed to follow his impulse to construct, to invent, to venture. He is protected from the sense of failure and helped to the realization of success. For it is understood that this sense of failure or realization of success, persists in his sub-consciousness as a mental attitude toward life. The "New Thought" teachers and many other modern cults are trying to put back into timid, and more or less unsuccessful individuals, this mental attitude, of which they had been dispossessed.

The mother in her right mind, is not frightened, when she sees a child having "his own way"; his "own way" is as much a part of him as his hair or his eyes. She no more thinks of it as a naughty way, because it is not yet "adapted," than she thinks of his adorable little hands as being deformed because they are useless for adult tasks.

As for the child's "way" being a stubborn or rebellious way,-that could only be possible, under the bare unqualified absolutism of the "Children should be made to mind" régime. Auto