Would you not fly to his side and draw him back and hold him tight in your arms? And if he were big and strong and insistent, though still your boy, would you not at least tell him that war is not all music and drum-beats and bright uniforms? Would you not warn him of its dangers, of its horrors? If he must go and you could not hold him, would you let him go unwarned of its realities—and unarmed?
Well, there is a war in progress—in our country, in your town; a war more terrible, more revolting than any chronicled in history. The youth of America are marching toward the battleground, and the splendid column is passing your window now, to-day and every day. Perhaps you do not see the conflict yourself, for the battlefield is always just around the corner.
As sure as you have a son, just so sure will he some day turn that corner. Just so sure will he some day stand on your doorstep, and feel the lure of the passing show, and just so sure will he some time be drawn into the conflict, when he will have to fight his way through as best he can. At six he is in your arms; at sixteen he will be on the firing-line; at twenty-six the ordeal will have passed and the battle will have been lost or won. Can you then look backward into the past and feel that you had warned and fortified him?
I can. Whatever may be in store for my boy, he goes to meet it with more than my prayers—he has, also, a full knowledge of life’s mysteries. He shares with me a thorough understanding of the evils that may beset him. If my affectionate admonitions can help him, he has them; if my mistakes of the past serve as danger signals along his pathway, he knows of them; if my longer experience and broader knowledge of the world’s ways can save him, he shall escape the snares and pitfalls that await the heedless step of the untaught and untold young.
Before he was seven I had told him whence we come. Scraps of conversation overheard on the street between his own playfellows warned me that the time had come and made my duty clear. I saw the pity of it! My boy, whom I had taught to look trustfully to me for the truth at all times and about all things; my boy hearing distorted and vulgarised bits of knowledge that should have come to him solemnly and sacredly from the parent whom he had learned to look upon as the fountainhead!
This is what I told him:
“God made everything, as you know. He made the sea and the land, the sky and the stars and the sun and the moon. He makes the trees and the plants and the animals and the boys and the girls who grow to be men and women. But when I say God makes these things I do not mean that He makes them with tools, as you would make a playhouse, or with His hands, as you would make a snow-man. He makes all of these things by a great plan which He has laid out and by which all things, with His help, spring up and grow, over and over again, so that the world may go on just as it is for years and years. By this plan all living things come from a seed. This seed is within all grown-up plants and grown-up animals. When a new plant is needed, a seed falls from the grown-up plant and falls into the soil, where it sprouts and becomes a young plant. Every kind of animal is composed of two sexes, the male sex and the female sex. The fathers are of the male sex; the mothers of the female sex. As the seed of plants is within the flower, so the seed of animals is within the mother animal. When a new animal is needed the seed within the mother slowly grows into a young animal like the father or mother, and while it is still very small it comes out into the light and sunshine; and that is what we mean when we say it is born. Men and women are animals. They are different from all other animals in that they can talk and think and are much higher and better in every way. But the seed forms within the mother just as it does within the plants and birds and animals of all kinds. And when another child is needed the seed begins to grow and takes the form of a little child and after awhile it comes into the world to be dressed and fed and cared for; that is what we mean when we say that a babe has been born. That is how you came into the world and how I came and how all of us came. It is all a part of God’s wonderful plan to keep the world growing greater and better and more beautiful. It is not good for boys to talk about these beautiful things in a rough way, and I hope you will not do so. I tell them to you because I want you to know the truth. If there is anything you do not understand, ask me and I will explain it. Whatever you may hear, no matter whether it is good or bad, if you want to know the truth about it come to me and I will tell you.”
That was all. Science in words of two syllables. Science is truth, and truth is what your boy demands.
My boy took me at my word. He came back for further enlightenment more than once. But every time I answered him soberly, freely and truthfully. And when he knew everything he was immune to that contamination which mystery breeds. And what is more, the parent had measured up to the child’s ideal. The father was still the fountainhead; and no boy will drink from the stagnant pool of vulgarity when the clear crystal water of truth is close at hand.