And the world's policy is not kind to childhood. What murderers are those its chief idols, Mars and Mammon! How cruel the game of war and the lust of gold! Who rules over the strife that robs children of parents who go to die in foreign lands? What genius, Herod or Christ, presides over the scene, when death-dealing batteries are planted before peopled cities, and the blood and brains of women and children are dashed out at every volley? Ye Christian chivalry, ye battle-loving parents, answer that question as for yourselves and your children! The lust of gold, that moves the world's habitual policy, is less savage but not much more merciful. The spirit of trade demands gain, and claims childhood too much as an instrument of gain. In the Old World, what myriads whom school or church never blesses or knows, are, almost from infancy, trained to the mine or loom, shut out from free air and play, cramped in body, as in mind. The conscience of Christians is waking up to the subject, I know, still what a world of wretchedness remains unalleviated! No poem in the language contains more terrific truth, than that noted ode, called "The Cry of the Children," blending, as it does, the tragic depth of Aeschylus with the tender pathos of Cowper. They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses Down the cheek of infancy-- "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;" "Our young feet," they say, "are very weak! Few paces have we taken, yet are weary-- Our grave-rest is very far to seek!" Ask the old why they weep, and not the children, For the outside earth is cold,-- And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old! Two words, indeed, of praying we remember; And at midnight's hour of harm,-- "Our Father," looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words, except "Our Father," And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within his right hand which is strong. "Our Father!" If He heard us, He would surely (For they call him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, "Come and rest with me, my child!"