Couple with the utterances quoted above such words as the following by Alonzo Bunker, whose faithful labors among the Karens of Burma have worked wonders in the transformation of a race, and it seems as though no conscientious, intelligent man or woman would need to go further for proof that the awakening social conscience regarding the welfare of children in our own land must include in its study and its efforts for improvement the children of all lands.
This unity of childhood marks the unity of the human race, and the saying that “human nature is the same in all the world” gains new emphasis when studied from the standpoint of the child.
... These characteristics which mark the unity of childhood among all races, sometimes appear to be accentuated among less intelligent peoples; so that, before the fogs of sin and ignorance have blurred the image of God in which they were created, they show a strength and brightness more marked than in their more favored brothers and sisters in enlightened lands. This fact has not received due attention in ethnological studies.[2]
The rights of every child.
Every child has the inalienable right to be well-born, to be welcomed, to be properly cared for and trained through the years of helplessness and development, to follow his instinct for healthful play, to receive an education sufficient to make him a self-supporting, useful member of society, to have such moral and spiritual training as will develop the highest type of character of which he is capable.
The rights of every mother.
Every mother has the right to accept the duties, responsibilities, and sufferings of motherhood of her own free will, to be surrounded by such conditions as will help her to bring her child into the world with the greatest possible safety to her own life and health and to those of her child, and to loving care during her days of weakness and recuperation.
Conservation of human resources.
Where the rights of mothers and children are not thus recognized and guarded, we have a condition that endangers the welfare of the race and leads to its deterioration. Every nation has looked well to the conservation of some part of its human resources,—to its royal line, to its soldiers or sailors, to its wise men and astrologers, to its priests and religious leaders.
The well-known methods of ancient Sparta, which consisted in destroying all weak children and submitting all boys of seven years old and upward to the most rigorous training under state educators, resulted in producing a race of warriors. Fighting men were what Sparta wanted, and fighting men she produced. The possible heir to a throne in modern times must have no drop of common blood in his veins. Royalty must therefore mate with royalty in order to conserve the royal line. And so we might go on and prove how one country after another observes the great law of conservation of human resources along some favorite line.
Importance of the children of a nation.