We turn and ask ourselves and one another this question. And lo!--we find that the needs of childhood are very much the same the world around. What is being done to meet those needs? Ah! that is a very different question, and startling, yes, more than startling, are the contrasts discovered as the thoughtful woman studies the subject of child life. [Sidenote: “The Age of the Child.”] The “unity of childhood” throughout the world makes this a vital question to all fathers and mothers, to educators, religious and social workers, to every thinking man and woman. So urgent a question has it become in many Christian lands that this has been aptly called “the age of the child.” In our own land the needs and rights of the child are being discussed on every hand, and through the Public Schools, Juvenile Courts, Juvenile Commissions, Federal Children’s Bureau, Playground Movement, Child Welfare Exhibits, Child Labor laws, and numerous other agencies we are striving to deal with the problem that involves the whole future of our land for weal or woe. [Sidenote: _All_ children must be included.] But just as I cannot care for the interests of my child alone, but must recognize that his life will be vitally influenced by whatever concerns his playmates and schoolmates, so I must inevitably be drawn into consideration of what is due to the children of the community, the state, the country, the world. What right have I to demand that my baby be well fed, my child be protected by laws that ensure his safety, that proper schools be provided for his education, that my daughter’s purity and girlhood be respected, unless I concede that right to every mother in the world and _care_ whether she has that right or not? One earnest mother heart poured itself out in these words when it was planned that the women’s missionary societies should take up the study of the children of non-Christian lands:-- “Sometimes I almost resent the absurd extremes of tenderness and care for babies here, when I think of the world of neglected children. It seems to me, our Women’s Missionary Societies are just a great, beautiful, organized motherhood for the world, and the women don’t half know or appreciate this or they would be swarming in by thousands and giving their money by millions.” If any woman is tempted to feel that the problems of our own land are so overwhelming and so imperative as to demand all our time and strength and attention, let her read what is said on this subject by Edward T. Devine, the eminent writer and professor and social worker, who is one of the greatest leaders in all lines of child welfare and general welfare work in America. Dr. Devine links our obligations to foreign lands inseparably to our duties to our own country.