As I write these lines, a stupendous war is raging in Europe with a ferocity that appals the outside world. Especially atrocious is the policy of one of the embattled nations, formerly regarded as a leader in modern civilisation. To attain its ends, this nation has violated treaty obligations as though they were of no consequence whatever; it has ruthlessly slain innocent noncombatants, even the citizens of neutral countries; wherever it has been victorious, it stands accused of vile brutalities. In its attitude towards its own soldiers it has displayed an almost incredible callousness, hurling them to certain destruction with cold-blooded nonchalance. Beholding all this, the people of other lands marvel and question. That, in the twentieth century, even under the stress of war, a civilised nation should thus revert to barbarism seems to baffle explanation. For myself, however, I am convinced that at least a partial explanation is to be found in the fact that the offending nation is one among whom the myth, the legend, and the fairy tale have pre-eminently flourished. In the stories which distinguished scholars have eagerly assisted to make available to the youth of this nation, indifference to human suffering and human life are too often conspicuous elements. Too often they are tinged by more than a suggestion of bloodthirstiness, cruelty, and the principle of revenge. When the childish mind has been fed upon these, stimulated by them to unhealthy fancies, and re-enforced in those instincts inherited from the primitive, which it should be the business of education to weaken and repress, is it to be wondered at that, in the crisis of war, there has been a veritable relapse to primitive savagery? In some degree, moreover, all the warring nations have been bred on fairy tales, and, in some degree, all have exhibited the same tendency to the cruel ways of primitive man. Throughout the world a fairy tale reform is needed for the development and maintenance of a true civilisation. But, mark you, it is a reform that is needed, not a banishment of the fairy tale. As some one has well said, a child who never hears a fairy tale is developing a tract in his soul that, in later life, will grow barren. More than this, cases are on record indicating that unless the child's instinctive craving for the romantic and the ideal is satisfied by well-chosen fairy tales, he may gratify this craving in ways that shock his elders. I will give one instance, by way of concrete illustration. For knowledge of this I am indebted to President Hall, of Clark University, and I give it in President Hall's own words: