and
scholars who have ever lived, and fills the heads of fool women with the
idea that they are born to teach instead of to work in the fields and
keep house and wait on men.

Mein Gott in Himmel, the women know too much, already! If this thing
keeps on, men will have to get off the earth, and women and children
will run the world, and do it by means of play. Aha! What does Solomon
say? Spare the rod and spoil the child. Aber nicht, say these girls.

This thing has got to stop before Germany becomes the joke of
mankind--the cat-o'-nine-tails for anybody who uses the word
kindergarten!

* * * * *

"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Had the man who uttered these words been
given a little encouragement, he probably would have inaugurated a
child-garden and provided a place and environment where little souls
could have bloomed and blossomed. He was by nature a teacher, and his
best pupils were women and children. Male men are apt to think they
already know and so are immune from ideas.

Jerusalem, nineteen hundred years ago, was about where Berlin was in
Eighteen Hundred Fifty. In both instances the proud priest and the
aristocrat-soldier were supreme. And both were quite satisfied with
their own mental attainments and educational methods. They were sincere.
It was a very similar combination that crucified Jesus to that which
placed an interdict on Friedrich Froebel, making the Kindergarten a
crime, and causing the speedy death of one of the gentlest, noblest,
purest men who have ever blessed this earth.

Froebel was just seventy when he passed out. "His eye was not dimmed nor
his natural force abated"--he was filled with enthusiasm and hope as
never before. His ideas were spreading--success, at last, was at the
door, he had interested the women and proved the fitness of women to
teach--his mothers' clubs were numerous--love was the watchword. And in
the midst of this flowering time, the official order came, without
warning, apology or explanation, and from which there was no appeal. The
same savagery, chilled with fear, that sent Richard Wagner into exile,
crushed the life and broke the heart of Friedrich Froebel. But these
names now are the pride and glory of the land that once scorned them.
Men who govern should be those with a reasonable doubt concerning their
own infallibility, and an earnest faith in men, women and