"But," I reminded him, "it was not until he made that 'chance reference' to his boy that any one was in the least moved. How do you explain that?" "Oh," said my friend, "we were not sure until then that he was in dead earnest--" "And then you were?" I queried. "Why, yes," my friend replied. "A man doesn't make use of his child to give weight to what he is advocating unless he really does believe it is just as good as he is arguing that it is." "So," I persisted, "it _was_, after all, his 'chance reference' to his boy--" "If you mean that nothing practical would have come of his speech, otherwise,--yes, it was!" my friend allowed himself to admit. Another friend who happened to be present came into the conversation at this point. "Suppose he had had no child!" she suggested. "Any number of perfectly sincere persons, who really believe that what they are advocating is just as good as they argue it is, have no children," she went on whimsically; "what about them? Haven't they any chance of winning their audiences when they speak on no-license,--or what not?" Those of us who are in the habit of attending "welfare" meetings of one kind or another, from the occasional "hearings" before various committees of the legislature, to the periodic gatherings of the National Education Association, and the National Conference of Charities and Correction, know well that, when advocating solutions of social problems as grave as and even graver than the "liquor problem," the most potent plea employed by those speakers who are not fathers or mothers begins with the words, "You, who have children." My friend who had said that a man did not make use of his child to give weight to his arguments unless he had a genuine belief in that for which he was pleading might have gone further; he might have added that neither do men and women make such a use of other people's children excepting they be as completely sincere,--provided that those men and women love children. And we are a nation of child-lovers.