Page:The new ideal in education - an address given before the League of the Empire on July 16th, 1916 (IA newidealineducat00veliiala).djvu/16

 us? When will they arrange the best trains, better than the royal trains, the most commodious and decorated with flowers and flags of different nations and with one special flag of the Children World Union? When the moment comes that the wonderful modern communication begins to help the children to meet each other and to pay visits to each other, at that moment the invention of steam and electricity will justify itself. In transferring the troops and facilitating crime it does net justify itself. Let the word communication be not only for the sake of crime and for the sake of bread; let it be for the sake of peace and of souls.

Let them sing together, everyone in his own tongue; I mean the children from the East and West and North and South. You should have been the other day in the Mansion House when the English and Serbian boys met together, and have listened to the English singing the Serbian and the Serbian singing the English National Anthems, and you would have been fascinated by the sweet revelation of the future world.

Let the children from the East and West and South and North, pray together. Why not? Bring them, thousands of them, to a mountain, upon which our ancestors prayed, and let them at sunset kneel down and sing some common prayer that they all know, or, if they have no such common prayer in their creeds, let them just kneel and silently pray! Such a silent prayer will do more good than any thousand years' old discussion about religion. It is very easy to convince all the children of the world, just because they are children, that they have one Father in Heaven, and that they shall send their prayers to Him. But even if they send their prayers in different directions, they will arrive at the same place. All prayers, whenever and wherever sent, go always the same way.

Let the children from the northern ice and from the tropical heat carry on a correspondence. Millions of letters are written and sent every day, which mean nonsense and evil. The post communication will justify itself much more