A. E. F. soldiers. This letter did not arrive until after the Christmas season was over. By Christmas, 1919, the war had ended, and so Mr. Roosevelt's letter never received the wide publication among the men for whom it was intended. We publish this message on this page, feeling that it will not have

I

lost its meaning or its timeliness for any of the men for whose encouragement it was written. It contains a message which America should be slow to forget.

The spirit of this letter provides a background for a story significant of the devotion in which Mr. Roosevelt was held by the countless friends who

never met him in the flesh. When a certain old lady heard of Mr. Roosevelt's death, she said: "I do not see why Mr. Roosevelt should have been taken away from us here unless it was that the Lord needed a big, kind-hearted colonel to look after the boys who have given. their lives in the war!"

S

KNOLL PAPERS

OME philosophers, searching among primitive peoples for the origin of religion, find its source in the primitive instincts of fear and dependence. The savage fears the unknown and seeks to appease the wrath of the gods or feels his dependence upon unknown powers and seeks to secure their aid in his undertakings. True. But not all the truth. Love is as primitive an instinct as fear, and the desire to protect is as universal as the desire for protection. The chickens fly to the mother hen when the hawk appears, but not more eagerly than the mother hen calls them to her protecting wings. The babe loves to cuddle to the mother's breast; not less does the mother love to have her babe lying there.

The world is a battlefield. Life is a perpetual struggle. But in this age-long campaign, struggle for others is as universal as struggle for self. Courage is as primitive as cowardice, self-sacrifice as self-seeking. Henry Drummond has shown in his revealing book "The Ascent of Man" that the life of selfsacrifice is discernible throughout the creation daily enacted before our eyes, from the division of the cell in the beginnings of life to the highest ministra tions of love in the mother's world. That self-sacrifice is a law of nature is recognized by such purely scientific and avowedly unreligious writers as Darwin and Haeckel, but by no one, I think, is it more beautifully portrayed and scientifically illustrated than by Drummond. He sums up his scientific demonstration in what might well be entitled "The Scientist's Psalm of Love:"

To interpret the course of Evolution without this law of sacrifice] would be to leave the richest side even of

BY LYMAN ABBOTT material Nature without an explanation. Retrace the ground even thus hastily traveled over, and see how full Creation is of meaning, of anticipation, of good for man, how far back begins the undertone of Love. Remember that nearly all the beauty of the world is Love-Beauty-the corolla of the flower and the plume of the grass, the lamp of the firefly, the plumage of the bird, the horn of the stag, the face of a woman; that nearly all the music of the natural world is Love-music-the song of the nightingale, the call of the mammal, the chorus of the insect, the serenade of the lover; that nearly all the foods of the world are Love-foods -the date and the raisin, the banana and the bread-fruit, the locust and the honey, the eggs, the grains, the seeds, the cereals, and the legumes; that all the drinks of the world are Lovedrinks-the juices of the sprouting grain and the withered hop, the milk from the udder of the cow, the wine from the Love-cup of the vine. Remember that the Family, the crown of all higher life, is the creation of Love ; that Co-operation, which means power, which means wealth, which means leisure, which therefore means art and culture, recreation and education, is the gift of Love. Remember not only these things, but the diffusions of feeling which accompany them, the elevations, the ideals, the happiness, the goodness, and the faith in more goodness, and ask if it is not a world of Love in which we live.

The reverence paid to the Virgin Mother is a sacramental recognition of this truth. All pure motherhood is adorable, because all pure motherhood is divine. The first child born in a home creates in that home a kind of love never before known there a father love and a mother love. The child

creates it because he needs it, and it is a moral as well as an economic truth that demand creates supply. It is true that in some mothers the capacity for mother love has been stifled by self-indulgence, and in other mothers it has been destroyed by despair. Nevertheless it is primitive, elemental, transcending all analysis, all definition. It is not too great for the boorish shepherds to revere it; nor, even in a stable, too common for the Wise Men to bow before it. And since love is the greatest thing in the world, and he that loveth knoweth God, we may reverently say that in every cradle lies an Immanuel, God with us.

The greatest gift ever given to the world was the Christ-child, for he came bringing to the world the gift of God's love, which is God's glory, and the gift of peace and good will among men, which are the very atmosphere and climate of God's kingdom. Every child is a Christ-child and brings to the world similar gifts. It is a curious fact that the new-born babe, who has nothing and is dependent on others for everything, brings with him to the mother who bore him the greatest of all gifts-the gift of mother love.

The mother needs the child no less than the child needs the mother. He needs some one to love him; she needs some one to love. Because he needs everything and she has everything to give he satisfies her heart, as the beauty of art satisfies her eye, the beauty of music satisfies her ear, the beauty of truth satisfies her reason. So our needs make us dear to God. There is one and only one gift we can give to him this Christmas season-we can give him some one to love.

And that is something.

Into the dark of my last quest
I will adventure with my might.
The stars shall bear me company:
They too are unafraid of night.

Into the earth as black as I,

Serenely will I go alone.

She will not turn, but hold me close,

Claiming me gladly for her own.

Forsaken I can never be,

Knowing that Death will come for me.

HE necessities of war created the American Air Service almost in a single night. The economies of peace have to a large extent caused it to wither in a day.

This child of war grew with such rapidity that its parents had little control over him. He was groggy at the knees and topheavy, and his appetite was enormous. So when the armistice came there went up a general sigh of relief that the precocious infant could now be abandoned. And abandoned it was, till it has dwindled and shrunk into an anæmic and starved prodigy. Experts and trained nurses have been called in

A BRITISH VIEW

BY CUTHBERT HICKS

LATE ROYAL AIR FORCE

for fear the child might pass away altogether, but up till now it lingers in spite of the fact that the doctors cannot decide what will best revive it into a healthy, sturdy offspring of the Nation and give it a permanent organization.

The whole trouble can be traced to one or two sources. First, the air service, being an entirely new organization, had no precedent upon which to build and no tradition to uphold, for in 1914 the United States possessed six airplanes and boasted fourteen pilots, and in the rush of war there is a time limit to expediency. Secondly, the lessons of war

proved that aircraft had not only come to stay, but that its importance was enormous and here is the real trouble. While no one, except two distinguished British admirals, has had the courage to say that aircraft has so revolutionized warfare that the navy and army will take second place to it, yet there appears to be throughout both services something that very nearly approaches resentment that this new science should be given such prominence. As matters stand to-day, it is not of course true that the air predominates over the water and land forces in matters of strategy and warfare, but there are shrewd judges who believe that it very soon will. There are also those who fear that it will, and with conservative selfishness desire to tie this prodigy to their apron strings lest it should become unruly.

WHO OBSTRUCT THE CREATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR?

It will be remembered that the American Aviation Mission, which visited England, France, and Italy, recommended "the concentration of the air activities, military, naval, and civilian, within the direction of a single Government agency created for the purpose co-equal in importance with the Departments of War, Navy, and Commerce." The vexed question of whether the Air Service should remain organized in two wings, one attached to the Navy and one to the Army, arose again, as it has in all the Allied countries. Also whether it should not be a separate arm of the fighting service.

In my opinion, neither the professional soldier nor the professional sailor is fully qualified to judge of the possibilities and powers of the air service. He is,