The love to be a soldier has its origin in many sources. Almost all boys pass through a period when they want to be soldiers. The wish to be a soldier is a compromise for various suppressed wishes. A soldier has been known to become a general and even a king. That fact is narrated in fairy tales, chronicled in sagas and recorded in history. One can manifest one’s patriotism. Then there is the beautiful coloured uniform that the girls so love--and one is always going somewhere. For one is never just an ordinary soldier but a bold, dashing trooper, and--this above all!--one has a big powerful sword. Under the influence of these childish desires children plead to go to the military schools and the parents give their consent in the belief that it is the children’s natural bent that speaks. Why, I tried to take this step when I was fifteen years old but--heaven be praised for it--was found physically unfit. My more fortunate friends who were accepted have for the most part subsequently discovered that they had erred in their youth. The same thing happens with respect to the other wishes of children, whether they become engineers, teachers, physicians, or ministers. The voice of the heart is deceptive and rarely betrays the individual’s true gift. The biographies of great men may now and then give indications of talent manifested in childhood. But the contrary is also easily to be found. Very often hidden desires are concealed or masked behind one’s choice of a calling. I know a man who became a physician because he longed to go far away, to go to the metropolis. In youth he had to be driven to practice his music--and yet music was his great talent and he should have become a musician. What our children want to become ... seldom denotes that they have a natural aptitude for a particular calling. They are to be regarded only as distorted symbols behind which the almost utterly insoluble puzzles of the childhood soul are concealed. When we are mature enough to know what we really want to become it is usually too late. Then we are children no longer. But then we would love to be children again and shed a furtive tear for the beautiful childhood that’s dead.... If we could be children again we’d know what we would like to be. No illusory wish would then tempt us from the right path, luring us like a will o’ the wisp into the morass of destruction. And this wish too is fulfilled. We become children again if we live long enough. But then, alas! our wishes have ceased to bloom. Over the stubble-field of withered hopes we totter to our inevitable destiny. Everything seems futile, for all paths lead to one goal. Then we know what children would like to become, what they must become. INDEPENDENCE