Many children even grew to be afraid of Christmas. They dreaded it as though it were a huge goblin or monster casting a shadow over the days which preceded it. The little delivery boys at the grocery stores became so weary lugging good things for Christmas dinners that they could not laugh real heartily or enjoy their own dinner when Christmas Day came. It was so late the night before when the last basket was delivered that the boys fell into a sleep too deep even for dreams. They lost the rare and radiant pleasure which is the birthright of boys,—the joy of dreaming of what a good time is coming on Christmas. And as for the little girls who worked all day long tying up bundles in the basements of the great stores, they did their best to keep alive in their hearts a genuine love of the birthday of Jesus, but, alas, in many cases their heroic efforts were in vain. “I just hate Christmas!” said one little girl to another at the end of a long and wearisome day. Things have indeed come to a tragic pass when a thought of the one most splendid and gorgeous day of the entire year quenches the sparkle in a child’s eyes and crushes every feeling of ecstatic anticipation out of a child’s heart. It was indeed a spectacle to cause one to stop and ponder, this widespread shrinking and shuddering at the very thought of Christmas, this long-drawn sigh of relief when Christmas was really over. And when I looked around and saw how all the days immediately preceding Christmas were thrown into tumult and confusion in which thousands of men and women and boys and girls were wounded, and many of them hurt with an injury that was deep; and when I looked at the days succeeding Christmas and saw them covered with the wreckage which Christmas had created, the holiday season resembling indeed a great battlefield on which a terrific battle had been fought, the maimed and bleeding lying moaning, waiting for the healing influences of a new year, I began to ask myself, What is the cause of this great tragedy, and how can humanity be delivered from so great a scourge?