Our Children and Theirs

With them:
The child belongs to his garden and his cradle...
To a happy, secure life...
To cleanliness, and health...

And with us:
The child belongs to the street and the heaps of filth...
To the nests of brothels, and the dens...
To disease that eats their bodies...
And ignorance that eats their minds...
With us, the child is for crime...

With them, the child is for life!

The child is a flower whose petals are closed upon themselves: if the winds come upon it in force, they scatter its parts and strew them here and there; or if the sun strikes it with its scorching breath, it destroys it in the cradle, before it has opened to life, before its heart has seen the light so as to beat with life and delight in happiness. But this flower sprouts and grows, in other people's lands, under the care of every watchful eye and in the shade of every sheltering wing — and their land is not so fertile as ours, nor is there in their sun and their breeze the warmth and life that are in our soil and its air. Why, then, does our flower come up with withering and misery in its eye, while in their roses there is vitality and gladness? Their children are happy, and our children are wretched.

And here I do not mean the small minority of rich children, but the children of the nation as a whole — the children of common folk and notables alike. Come with me, my dear lady reader, to cast a passing glance at some of the human care that surrounds their child, and set against it the denial and indifference that surround ours!...

I searched in different regions of Europe — in its north, in Sweden and Denmark; in its west, in London; in its center, in France and Switzerland; and in its south, in Italy — I searched in all these regions for a child lying wrapped in the earth, with insects and dirt nesting on him, and I did not find him there. I found instead the homes and playgrounds built especially for him and for his future. Let us enter Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in London, or the Luxembourg in Paris, or the other public gardens in other cities and countries: we see that most of the visitors to these gardens — especially on sunny days — are children in the company of their parents or their nurses, playing on the green grass and frolicking, filling the world with a chirping beyond the chirping of sparrows and a gaiety beyond the gaiety of flowers. Over there a group is playing with a little dog, racing against him, and the grand prize is a piece of candy for the dog — or for the child — whichever is the lucky one with the swift legs. In another corner a number of them, charmed by the water, have set about sailing their little boats with white sails, or their swift steam-driven ones; and how happy is he whose boat comes in ahead of the other, as though his own personal charm had hastened the sail's course and the push of the wind behind it. Those are gardens all their own, holding every means of amusement and profit together. In one corner of Kensington, for instance, is a small garden with some livestock of various kinds; the children busy themselves offering grass, or a share of the cakes and sweets they carry, to these tame animals and their young — and so the little one learns much about them, and about kindness to animals, from his tenderest years, just as he grows up brave and comes to understand that what you do not harm will not harm you...

And how often you see grandfathers reclining on special chairs in the spacious public gardens, and around them ripe human blossoms bent over something you cannot make out until you draw near: a great book full of attractive colored pictures, and behind those pictures meanings and lessons that refine the child and polish his character, preparing him for manhood and for the homeland even as they amuse and delight him. Where, then, are the books for children among us? And where are the libraries set apart for them, founded in other people's countries especially for their sake, containing — besides hundreds of books suited to every sex and every age — assorted pictures, and appointed hours for showing certain motion pictures on many cultural subjects, which at the same time do not lack the element of amusement!!...

And suddenly the air carries to you a heavenly music rising from those earnest little groups who have taken reading for their pastime. How beautiful a music it is, issuing from small, pure hearts! And how the visitor to some museum, or to some concert hall, marvels when he finds a mother accompanying her children, standing with them long enough before the various works of art, showing them the points of art and beauty in them in a language and a manner they can grasp and comprehend — and how lovely the children are, held fast by the magic of melody, every feature of their faces bespeaking an effort to understand, and delight. Can such children as these ever know, from earliest childhood, the meaning of misery and the black face of life? Why, then, do we not prepare for our children such instructive and amusing things? Why do we deprive them of public gardens and parks of their own, of the libraries and museums set apart for them, only to fling them into the streets, onto the edges of the roads, and among the dirt? Why do we not provide them with games and ways of passing the time other than clambering up the sides of the tramcars, exposing their souls to death, their bodies to amputation and disfigurement, and their spirits to crime? Are they not our sons, and the men of our homeland's future?!! And if we do not care about them, why then do we bring them into life at all?? And why does a father not consider his economic ability to make his child happy before he multiplies their number, staggering under the burden of getting food for them and rearing them as he ought?

The child has a personality that must be respected, and he has claims upon us, duties that must be rendered to him — or else we are criminals, for setting them down in a life that is not theirs and forcing them to things that are not of their nature. You who are responsible: prepare for your children, and for the children of this nation who are laid upon your necks, playgrounds of their own and homes set apart for the healthy and the unhealthy among them! Make schooling compulsory, so that the school, and not the street and the dirt, becomes the place where children spend the hours of the day! Broaden the minds of the common run of parents, so they see that what best serves the darlings of their hearts is to tend them and look after their affairs themselves, not to leave them to nature and to the roads! Clean nature does its work most excellently, but the moment man meddles in its course he corrupts it and turns its channel! And the child cast into the street is not a child — indeed, he is not even an animal, for the animal knows by instinct what is good for it and moves toward it, while the child knows nothing of that.

A little girl scarcely more than three years old put the scrap of paper left over from eating her chocolate into her pocket, saying that she would not throw it on the ground but into the box provided for the purpose as soon as she reached one. Here is a girl accustomed to cleanliness, the rules of health, and the love of others from her tenderest years. How far she is from most of our children, who see before them only people who throw onto the ground not merely scraps of chocolate paper, but pounds of dirt and filth; nor are our children the ones to blame, for they see the grown-ups doing it and imitate them... Tell me, I beg you: can you assure me that you have once left your house and set out for some other place, and passed along your way without being caught, there in the street, by the spray of spittle — whether in the streetcar, or on the sidewalks and the road?!

I was walking once in one of London's crowded streets, lined on both sides with dwelling houses — and the sun in the British capital is a rare thing, even in summer. The weather was fine that day and the sun was shining, but apparently it did not enter one of the houses there, and the housewife was unwilling to deprive her child of its warmth and its rays, so beneficial to her infant's health; so she put him in his little carriage and stood it near the entrance door, quite certain that no harm of any kind would come to her son. Yet she feared one thing only: that passers-by might take a fancy to her child and give him something to eat. So she wrote out a large sheet and hung it above the carriage, on the wall of the fence surrounding the house: "Please do not feed him — thank you...!" And how lovely that nursing infant was, enjoying the light of the sun, all serenity, with gladness plain upon his face. Can the mothers of our children feel so secure about their lives?! A grown man can no longer feel secure about his own life in our streets these days — how much less our children?!

Beirut is no more crowded than any one of the European capitals, and yet there you see the many automobiles moving in perfect order and absolute calm, and there are no overseers, no scores of gendarmes scattered through the streets; the automatic lights play the part of the traffic policeman, and the well-mannered people, raised on order, respect the law and hold it sacred, and dare not break it even when no watchman stands by. And so the child can walk in the street and go to school while his family rests assured of his safety and his life. How many a time have whole columns of automobiles been halted to let a child, or a woman with her child, cross a crowded street.

Accustom your children to order, and practice it as they do, so that they may take you for a good example. It happened once in Switzerland that a bus stood still for some minutes — minutes that count as many, given how much they matter to those people — and the purpose of it was the request of a child who had reached the stop by his house before the ticket-taker had come round to him; so he called him, gave him what he owed, and then got off... How far are our children from this? And where are our men, who ride at the doorways of the tramcars and on their windows to dodge paying the five piasters and save them?!

So, sons of the homeland: take upon yourselves the task of preparing a well-mannered generation, sound of body, complete in upbringing, and sound of mind. Respect children, and prepare for them the means of their small world, which must have an atmosphere of its own, different from yours, and a particular circle other than yours. The child belongs to his garden and his school, not to the street and to crime... The child belongs to a serene, quiet life, not to clamor and chaos... And if you yourselves did not enjoy a happy childhood, then prepare one for your children; you will rejoice in their happiness and take pride in them... Are they not your very hearts walking upon the earth?!