Footnote *: December 28, 1917.]

It seems--rather, it seemed. Who can pierce the "hues of earthquake
and eclipse" which darken the aspect of the present world? Who
can foresee, or even reasonably conjecture, the fate which is in
store for the children who to-day are singing their carols in the
church of the Confessor? Will it be their lot to be "playing in the
streets" of a spiritual Jerusalem--the Holy City of a regenerated
humanity? or are they destined to grow up in a reign of blood and
iron which spurns the "Vision of Peace" as the most contemptible
of dreams?

In some form or another these questions must force themselves on
the mind of anyone who contemplates the boys and girls of to-day,
and tries to forecast what may befall them in the next four or
five years.

It is a gruesome thought that the children of to-day are growing up
in an atmosphere of war. Bloodshed, slaughter, peril and privation,
bereavement and sorrow and anxiety--all the evils from which happy
childhood is most sedulously guarded have become the natural elements
in which they live and move and have their being. For the moment
the cloud rests lightly on them, for not "all that is at enmity
with joy" can depress the Divine merriment of healthy childhood;
but the cloud will become darker and heavier with each succeeding
year of war; and every boy and girl is growing up into a fuller
realization of miseries which four years ago would have been
unimaginable.

But at Christmastide, if ever, we are bound to take the brightest
view which circumstances allow. Let us then assume the best. Let us
assume that before next Innocents' Day the war will have ended in
a glorious peace. God grant it; but, even in that beatific event,
what will become of the children? They cannot be exactly what they
would have been if their lot had been cast in normal times. Unknown
to themselves, their "subconscious intelligence" must have taken a
colour and a tone from the circumstances in which they have been
reared. As to the colour, our task will be to wipe out the tinge
of blood; as to the tone, to restore the note which is associated
with the Angels' Song.

This is my "Plea for the Innocents." What will the State offer
them as they emerge from childhood into boyhood, and from boyhood
into adolescence?

Perhaps it will offer Conscription; and, with no "perhaps" at all,
some strident voices will pronounce that offer the finest boon
ever conferred upon the youth of a