My "Little Bit"

Nothing is lovelier than the sight of a perfectly happy child—a little, laughing, dancing, restless, sparkling bit of humanity just beginning to expand into life like a plant putting forth leaves and tendrils and buds that promise fairest flowering—a creature of unspoilt confidence and innocence whose whole consciousness is absorbed in wonder and delight at the strange newness of the world around it, and all the beautiful, amazing things the world offers for its attraction and pleasure. The flight of a bird—the delicate caperings of a butterfly—the flicker of sunshine on the wall—the ripple of water—the sound of joyous laughter and dainty music—all these pleasures and many more captivate and move a child to smiling and pleased gesture—the little voice, the little hands, express wordless ecstasy—the young eyes glisten with unutterable meanings. Fresh from the unseen Power that declared “Let us make man in Our image,” it displays a pathetic faith in good—it trusts all the big, grown-up people around it in an exquisite confidence that none of them will allow it to suffer harm—it accepts life as it finds it, with the beautiful assurance of a flower which opens to the sun, instinctively certain that all is, or shall be, well. Let us remember that a child might never know evil if its elders did not instruct it therein! It is as innocent as any other young animal—innocent as a kitten or St. Bernard puppy, than which nothing is more blunderingly simple and touchingly confident. If we watch the unspoilt, natural gaiety and playfulness of all young things we cannot but realise the truth of the Divine pronouncement on creation, “Behold, it was very good!” and that we were meant to be happy on this planet—moreover, that we should be happy, if it were not that we cannot leave each other alone—we must always be backbiting and hurting each other, interfering in our neighbour’s business and grudging our neighbour his or her special form of happiness. No child can be honestly said to know evil till we assure it that evil exists—till we frown and say “Naughty! That is wrong!” heedless of the bewildered eyes that mutely ask “Why?” As the Italian proverb says: “The ‘Why’ of a child is the key of the Universe.” Generally speaking, a child’s attitude towards life is one of complete reliance on unknown but trusted destiny, and in very early years, if that reliance should be broken, the little spirit so startled by some cruel blow is seldom or never the same again. But a few years ago, when we who plead for the children now were all children ourselves, the phrase “a bolt from the blue” was a phrase merely, expressing a possible calamity, too sudden almost to ever take place—and little did any of us dream that we should be forced to realise its literal achievement. The ingenuity of man, warped to devise schemes of wickedness rather than beneficence, has brought about a state of things in which the once secure loveliness of the heavens has become accursed by his vindictive presence, bearing with him through the offended air the means of destruction and death to the innocent and non-combatant populations of peaceful earth places below—and without a generous human thought for the lives of others, he speeds his selfish and devilish flight, insanely convinced that he is a brave man in his efforts to kill his fellow-creatures from the air, as well as on the land and under the sea. Nothing more heroic is left to him by his governments, teachers, propagandists and the like but to kill—to kill! Were he—apart from the red crime of War—to murder man, woman, or child in cold blood, with circumstances of mutilation and burning, he would be condemned to the gallows—but the wind-blown scarecrow of a false “patriotism” speaks, nay, shouts, “Herein killing is no murder!” and he rushes on his way through the air as though to perform an errand of mercy instead of slaughter, dropping bombs of destruction anywhere that seems to him feasible, and when he can have, as he reports, “good results!” “Good” results! “O Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Let us look with the eyes of the mind and the heart on such a scene as has been enacted many times recently—a group of little children in a school, singing their little play-songs, or repeating their earliest lessons—happy, innocent, confiding—when, suddenly and without warning, a murderous crash and thunderburst of explosives is launched from the air through the roof above them, and where the young lithe bodies a moment ago disported themselves, there lie mutilated corpses drenched in blood. Our foes call that “war”—but I would fain believe that in their own hearts they know it is butchery, and that they deplore the merciless militarism that compels them to perform such deeds. And even worse than death for these little ones is the stunning blow on their mentality—the horrible knock, as it were, on the delicate membrane of the nervous system, which bruises it in a subtle, creeping way that is almost unimaginable. Contrast a healthy, happy child, playing fearlessly in the fields among the flowers, with one who is suffering from “raid shock”—and who sometimes sits lost in a vague stupor, unwilling to move—afraid to look up at the sky lest something fiendish should fall from it! I know one such child who refuses now to raise his eyes from a morose study of the ground. Hour after hour he sits frowningly absorbed. Pressed recently to look at the flight of a butterfly through the air, he gave a terrified glance at it sideways, and then resumed his downward staring. A kindly nurse, trying to rouse him, said, “You mustn’t be frightened of the sky—God is up there!” but he uttered a little pained cry and covered his face, sobbing, “No—no—no! Wicked man up there—not God!”

There is no need to comment on the effect of such impressions on a child’s vivid imagination; it is altogether dreadful and disastrous, for who can tell what damaging results to the brain may be in store for the innocent little victim! Time and care, with healthful surroundings and healing influences, may do much to eliminate the evil and disperse the horror and cruelty of such experiences—and this is why the “St. Nicholas Home” exists to-day, thanks to the loving heart and patience of its founder, Mrs. Kimmins, whose tenderness for children makes one feel that Her guardian angel, as well as the angels who watch over Christ’s little ones, must always “behold the Face of the Father.” No one with even a small amount to spare from the multitudinous claims made on the pocket of the unfortunate British taxpayer, whose Governments have dragged him into the incredible wickedness of a war for which he had neither the taste nor the inclination, will refuse that mite to assist the work of the “good Saint Nicholas” in the home over which his childhood-loving spirit presides, while those who are making much of the “filthy lucre” out of the exigencies and demands of the nations’ slaughter-houses will perchance salve conscience by munificence. Some of the donors may call to mind the story of the father who murdered his three sons, and whose crime St. Nicholas discovered in a vision. Going to the inn where the murderer was, the saint forced him to confess his wickedness, and forthwith raised the three boys to life again. In this legend we may find a happy symbol for the “Home” on whose behalf we plead. For the “raid-shock” children are, in a sense, murdered, though alive—murdered in their natural confidence, hope, and gaiety, and crushed by the oppressive consciousness of an ever-looming evil. We wish, as St. Nicholas did with the three boys, to raise them to life again—to re-establish their youthful trust, to make them forget that there are men who are devils—but perhaps to persuade them that there are women who are angels! Women, with mothers’ hearts, ready to put mothers’ arms round them—to play with them and talk “fairy bits”—as a sweet little girl asked me to do the other day—women who will care for them and see that nothing scares them from their healthful sleep at night, or their innocent games by day. This is the object of our appeal for “St. Nicholas Home”—a worthy cause—a noble, humane, and sacred cause, for we must “take heed” that we “offend not one of these little ones.” And most earnestly do I join with all who have put their shoulders to the wheel of this great Car of good effort steadily going a stiff way uphill—a strong push, a big push, and a push all together, and we shall stand on the shining summit of success with our saved children gathered round us in the light of happier days!