Nothing is lovelier than the sight of a perfectly happy child--a little, laughing, dancing, restless, sparkling bit of humanity just beginning to expand into life like a plant putting forth leaves and tendrils and buds that promise fairest flowering--a creature of unspoilt confidence and innocence whose whole consciousness is absorbed in wonder and delight at the strange newness of the world around it, and all the beautiful, amazing things the world offers for its attraction and pleasure. The flight of a bird--the delicate caperings of a butterfly--the flicker of sunshine on the wall--the ripple of water--the sound of joyous laughter and dainty music--all these pleasures and many more captivate and move a child to smiling and pleased gesture--the little voice, the little hands, express wordless ecstasy--the young eyes glisten with unutterable meanings. Fresh from the unseen Power that declared “Let us make man in Our image,” it displays a pathetic faith in good--it trusts all the big, grown-up people around it in an exquisite confidence that none of them will allow it to suffer harm--it accepts life as it finds it, with the beautiful assurance of a flower which opens to the sun, instinctively certain that all is, or shall be, well. Let us remember that a child might never know evil if its elders did not instruct it therein! It is as innocent as any other young animal--innocent as a kitten or St. Bernard puppy, than which nothing is more blunderingly simple and touchingly confident. If we watch the unspoilt, natural gaiety and playfulness of all young things we cannot but realise the truth of the Divine pronouncement on creation, “Behold, it was very good!” and that we were meant to be happy on this planet--moreover, that we _should_ be happy, if it were not that we cannot leave each other alone--we must always be backbiting and hurting each other, interfering in our neighbour’s business and grudging our neighbour his or her special form of happiness. No child can be honestly said to know evil till we assure it that evil exists--till we frown and say “Naughty! That is wrong!” heedless of the bewildered eyes that mutely ask “Why?” As the Italian proverb says: “The ‘Why’ of a child is the key of the Universe.” Generally speaking, a child’s attitude towards life is one of complete reliance on unknown but trusted destiny, and in very early years, if that reliance should be broken, the little spirit so startled by some cruel blow is seldom or never the same again. But a few years ago, when we who plead for the children now were all children ourselves, the phrase “a bolt from the blue” was a phrase merely, expressing a possible calamity, too sudden almost to ever take place--and little did any of us dream that we should be forced to realise its literal achievement. The ingenuity of man, warped to devise schemes of wickedness rather than beneficence, has brought about a state of things in which the once secure loveliness of the heavens has