some day.

Sec. 2. FIGHTING

The best of men are likely to have a secret satisfaction in their boys'
fights, and the bravest of mothers will deplore them. The fathers know
how hard are the knocks that life is going to give; the mothers hope
that the boys can be saved from blows. A man's life is often pretty much
of a fight, every day struggling in competition and rivalry; we have not
yet learned the lesson of co-operation, and we still tend to think of
business as a battlefield. Something in us calls for fighting; we have
to use the utmost strength at our command to fight the evil tendencies
of our own hearts; often we rejoice in life as a conflict. It feels good
to find causes worth fighting for. If all this is true of the man, it
is not strange that the small boy, scarce more than a young savage, will
find opportunities for conflict. He is more dependent on the weapons of
force than is his father. He cannot cast out the enemy with a ballot,
nor with a sneer or biting sarcasm, nor by some device or strategy of
business or affairs. He can only hit back. Taken altogether, boys settle
their differences as honestly at least as do men.

Moreover, children's fights are not as cruel as they seem to be; even
the bloodshed means little either of pain or of injury. A boy may be
badly banged up today and in full trim tomorrow; it is quite different
with the wounds bloodlessly inflicted by men in their conflicts.

Does all this mean that boys should be encouraged to fight? No; but it
does mean that when Billy comes home with one eye apparently retired
from business, we must not scold him as though he were the first
wanderer from Eden. That fight may have been precisely the same thing as
a croquet game to his sister, or any test of skill to his big brother,
or a business transaction to his father; it was a mere contest of two
healthy bodies at a time when the body was the outstanding fact of life.
The fight may give us our chance, however, to aid him to a sense of the
greatness of life's conflict, to a sense of the qualities that make the
true fighter. It may leave him open to the appeal of true heroism. We
must make light of the victory of brute strength, just as we may make
light of his wounds and scars, and glorify the victory of the mind and
will.

The boy who fights because he lacks control of temper needs careful
training. He gets a good deal of discipline on the playground and
street, but it is not always effective; t