we all have confidence that its membership includes possessors of all the knowledge and experience necessary to that duty. The office of people, in the churches or out, whose belief is vivid and practiced enough to get help out of the invisible world, is to bring the conference that help. It will surely need it; it is likely to win or lose according as it gets it or not; and, since the world has need that the conference should win something effectual, let all helpers help with all they know and all they can. Miss Jane Addams went to the League sittings at Geneva and reported when she came away that the League needed humanizing. So will the conference need humanizing, and it is the office of all of us of the mass of interested people-to humanize it every day all we can. If it is to be a success, it must be a popular success. It cannot be a success of specialists. Whatever it achieves that is good must in the main be an achievement of human hearts. We may best keep Christmas this year by "rooting" for that conference, sustaining it, feeling its importance, helping it by mind, by will, by soul, by speech, and written word in so far as we can. There is a great chance for it, and, gracious! what a need! What difficulties confront itJapan sensitive, aspiring, only a couple of generations from feudalism, instructed mainly in those methods of the Western civilization that were finally scrapped, we all hope, by the war. How will the conference think with Japan, feel with Japan, give Japan a fair deal, and yet do its duty not only by Europe and America, but by Asia? Japan is difficult, but, after all, Japan is human and the conference must be humanized enough to find her humanity. Everything that conference must do is difficult. France is difficult, and Germany, and all middle Europe, and the limitation of armament, and perhaps there will even be something to say about Ireland. Its dance is an egg dance. The more reason why we should all help it by all the means we can, mental and spiritual, hand and voice and printed word. Our best hopes for the conference and for any radical improvement in the methods of conducting human life on this planet are, frankly, religious hopes, based on the birth we celebrate at Christmas, and the ministry and the teachings that followed. If there is not enough in Christianity to save our present edifice of civilization-enough wisdom, enough illumination, enough power -then the outlook is far from bright, for other means have been tried repeatedly in past ages, and there are only ruins to show for the civilizations they could not save. No, not ruins only; but besides them an imperfect record of experiences. We know, in a way, the course those earlier civilizations ran and through what processes they crumbled. In that knowledge we ought to be wiser than our fathers, and there is hope that we are. Besides all the pages of history, we have vividly before our eyes the spectacle of a war surpassing in destructiveness any that we have record of, and proceeding out of very much such circumstances and rivalries as those that destroyed in turn the civilizations that preceded ours. We know more clearly and more generally than was ever known before what lies ahead for us and all we have, if we cannot mend the ways of human life. We see limitless knowledge within our grasp if civilization can hold together long enough for us to attain it. We see destruction awaiting the present works of man if that growing knowledge takes destructive forms. We know what our case is and some of us know there is a cure for it. In the Washington conference there is a means to make that cure. practically operative. It belongs to us to feel then that all that we can do to make that conference successful is done to save our civilization from what befell Egypt, Assyria, the Roman Empire, and all the rest. Μ' ISS NIOBE FLAVIA CERES SERTORIUS Was a young Roman girl of a beauty quite glorious. And was like modern damsels, but not quite so rompy. And in manner quite childish for one of her years, And this was the trouble. The damsel had heard- "Twas a difficult feat, for, as you may suppose, Could she hang up a stocking, when stocking she'd not? Her handmaidens tried hard to comfort and cheer, He heard the loud wails, and benignantly smiled, While her poor little heart nearly broke with its throbs. Niobe, it's now only ninety B. C. You must study your history harder, my pet; HE Just to keep Santa Claus from getting in bad A Miltonic Battle ENRIETTA, aged four years, was forbidden to go off the lawn. One morning her mother found her daughter standing in the gateway with one foot on the sidewalk and the other foot within the gate. "Henrietta," said the surprised parent, "have you forgotten that you are not allowed out in the street?" "Well, Satan kept saying, 'Go on the street,' and God said, 'Don't go on the street,' so I put one foot out and kept the other foot in; and now they can just fight it out between them." An Extraordinary Theft ADVANCE agents of musical shows are usually careful to ascertain the peculi. arities, the merits, and demerits of the theaters and halls they are to exhibit in, for the benefit of the performers when they arrive. One of these agents, having hired a hall in a Kentucky town, asked the proprietor of the building: "How are the acoustics of your hall?" "The which?" said the Kentuckian. THE No Booster HE motorist was on unfamiliar ground, and directly before him was a fork in the road with no signpost to tell him which way to go. "Which way to Stumpville?" he asked of a dejected-looking man who roosted on a fence near at hand. The native languidly waved his hand toward the left. "Thanks," said the motorist. "How far is it?" ""Tain't so very far," was the drawling reply. "When you get there, you'll wish it was a durn sight farther." Johnny grew more and more bored as each new one made its appearance. "This is G," said his mother, rather discouragedly. Johnny was suddenly interested. "G" he questioned, excitedly. "Is it G, mamma?" "Yes, it is G." No Occasion for Speech LITTLE Louise was lost on the street and was brought into the police station. The officers tried in every way to learn her name. Finally one of the officers said: "What name does your mother call your father?" "Why," said Louise, very innocently, "she don't call him any name; she likes him." Late Contrition SARAH, reprimanded twice within an hour for the same deed of mischief, was threatened with a whipping if she repeated it. She decided she would take a sporting chance, but mother was as good as her promise and led the little truant to the nursery. As the slipper was about to descend, Sarah, with a saintly face, looked at her mother and in a very solemn voice said: "God be merciful to me a sinner." "Did Santy Claus give you those?" "Santy Claus me eye! We take off'n the Red Cross." Somnambulism LITTLE Bobby, aged four, was allowed to attend the christening ceremony of his baby brother. Bobby was entranced by the novelty of the occasion, and followed events with absorbed interest. But when the parson closed his eyes to pray Bobby's feelings became too much for him. Grasping his mother's hand, he exclaimed, loudly enough for all to hear, "Mother, why is that man talkin' in his sleep!" |