I have before me as I write a letter or a fragment of a letter written by a young sergeant of the French army to his parents ere he fared forth in early August, 1914, to Lorraine,--a youth of promise on the eve of fulfilment. These are his words, unread until after his death in the following month, which he gloriously met, fighting to the end against the overwhelming numbers to which he refused to surrender. "Be sustained by the contemplation of the beautiful which you cannot fail to love, and which brings you to the eternal principle to which our soul returns.... It is not they who pass for whom we must mourn. I desire but one thing, that I may have a death worthy of the life of my admirable and truly loved father." No conflict here but perfect concord, the concord of a perfect comradeship. The father a distinguished servant of his country in war and peace, the mother a seeker after God and the highest, had been as his comrades, going just a little before and teaching him how to live and toil and hope. He dared all and fell with peace in his heart and faith in his unconquered soul that all was well, that the comradeship of earth would merge at last in the comradeship eternal. The Prophet was right: "And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers." For the Messiah is born when the hearts of parents and children are turned to each other in reverence and selflessness. For then it is that the home is brought nearer to the presence of God and that clashing and conflict end--when, in the word of a noble teacher of our generation, it is remembered that "the child is itself a gift, first to parents out of the infinite, then by them to the eternal." Footnotes [A] Toward Social Reform, p. 111. [B] Parenthood and Race Culture, p. 193. [C] Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, p. 68. [D] Choice of Books, p. 8. [E] Emerson, "The Oversoul." [F] Atlantic Monthly, August, 1921, p. 221. [G] Our Social Heritage, p. 60. [H] _Idem_, p. 95. [I] _Idem_, p. 224. [J] P. 63. [K] Getting Married, Preface, pp. 132-133. [L] The Making of a Teacher, p. 34. [M] Emerson in Concord (E. W. Emerson) p. 8. [N] Emerson in Concord, p. 21. [O] Tucker, Public-Mindedness, p. 133. [P] Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 123. [Q] Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 160. [R] Public-Mindedness, p. 77. [S] Higginson, Contemporaries, p. 2. [T] Darmesteter, Life of Renan, p. 45. [U] _Idem_, p. 103. [V] History of Israel, Vol. II, p. 163. [Transcriber's Note: * The footnotes have been moved to the end of the book. * Pg 6 Corrected spelling of words "needs limit" to "need limits" located in the phrase "I must needs limit myself". * Pg 20 Corrected spelling of word "harrassing" to "harassing" located in the phrase "out of a harrassing difficulty". * Pg 43 Corrected spelling of word "relalation" to "relation" located in the phrase "parental-filial relalation".