The Century of the Child

ELLEN KEY
From a photograph
Ellen Key
G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press
Copyright, 1909 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Published, February, 1909 Reprinted, December, 1909 The Knickerbocker Press, New York
The present translation is from the German version of Frances Maro, which was revised by the author herself.

The Century of the Child
Filled with sad memories or eager hopes, people waited for the turn of the century, and as the clock struck twelve, felt innumerable undefined forebodings. They felt that the new century would certainly give them only one thing, peace. They felt that those who are labouring to-day would witness no new development in that process of change to which they had consciously or unconsciously contributed their quota.
The events at the turn of the century caused the new century to be represented as a small naked child, descending upon the earth, but drawing himself back in terror at the sight of a world bristling with weapons, a world in which for the opening century there was not an inch of free ground to set one's foot upon. Many people thought over the significance of this picture; they thought how in economic and in actual warfare all the lower passions of man were still aroused; how despite all the tremendous development of civilisation in the century just passed, man had not yet succeeded in giving to the struggle for existence nobler forms. Certainly to the question why this still is so, very different answers were given. Some contented themselves with declaring, after consideration, that things must remain just as they are, since human nature remains the same; that hunger, the propagation of the race, the desire for gold and power, will always control the course of the world. Others again were convinced that if the teaching which has tried in vain for nineteen hundred years to transform the course of the world could one day become a living reality in the souls of men, swords would be turned into pruning hooks.