ed
neither a Pitt nor a Wellington. They have been shut out. That is our
impoverishment. For great souls will no longer come aboard a world
such as this.

{21}

VI

And yet there were those who would have given all they had if to them
there were given what these others spurned. They knew that the only
abiding joy of life is the joy of little children. But that was denied
them. They had boundless capacities of love and of sacrifice, but the
opportunity of development came not to them. Few cries can pull at the
heartstrings like the cry of the old maid:

'All day long I sit by the window and wait,
While the spring winds fling their roses everywhere,
And I hear the voice of my husband cry at the gate,
And the feet of my children tremulous on the stair.

'Hour by hour I dream at the window here,
While footsteps trip and falter adown the street,
And I hear my children murmuring, "Mother, dear!"
And the voice of my husband crying, "Sweet, oh sweet!"'

{22}

But they who had the opportunity went out pursuing the mirage of
pleasure, and they wanted no voices crying 'Mother, mother.' And these
others were left with their hunger--left to 'clasp air and kiss the
wind for ever.' For the modest never attained in the days when the
vulgar and the blatant received the incense and the crown. It was
because the pure were disregarded that the cult of the empty cradle
cast the glamour of its degeneration over the land.

VII

In the so-called dark ages the mother and the child were an object of
veneration if not of worship. Men thrilled with the sense of the
sacredness of life because they feared God--the source of life. What
the race needs is to go on pilgrimage back to the Manger--back to the
Child. But, alas! the spiritually dead cannot go on pilgrimage. First
the dead must be quickened. What we need most of all is to cleanse
these self-filled, soiled hearts in the {23} fountain of
self-sacrifice. The soul of the race, if the race is to be saved, must
go on pilgrimage back to the Manger--back to the Mother and the Child.

'And he who gives a child a home
Builds palaces in kingdom come.
And she who gives a baby birth
Brings Saviour Christ again to earth.'

When, last winter, the enemy poured into a trench, and almost all the
defenders were killed, a French sergeant, grievously wounded, grasped a
rifle and began to shoot, crying out to his semi-conscious comrades,
'