NOWADAYS, especially in a place like Los Angeles and Hollywood, there are so many ‘isms, ‘ists, and new cults for the adult, but nothing for the children. They have even taken away God’s Name and Word out of the rearing places for the young; and the irony of it is this is called “God’s Own Country”—a country which is instead becoming the most Godless in the world, with its banditry, murders, kidnapping and graft in politics and finance. Bribery and “hush” money are rampant, and an oath of honor or fealty means absolutely nothing to many, but is deliberately used as a stepping stone to self-enrichment.

By taking Religion from the schools the children have had taken from them an Ideal—something high and fine to live up to and to follow. It is like turning off the heat of a propagating house full of delicate seedlings.

Why was not the Golden Rule substituted for the Word of God when they took His Name out of the schools? For that would have belonged to every Creed and offended none. To do unto others only those things which you would like others to do to you; to say, and think only what you would care to have said and thought about you, would be a training any Nation could be proud of.

More especially in a comparatively new country which is open to the riff-raff and aliens, often undesirable, and usually in trouble, or not able to make good in their own land, and therefore, who flock here knowing there are so many loopholes in the Law they can wriggle through.

By deleting Religion out of the school curriculum, the children of America are being sent on to the Highway of Life, from which every helping sign and guidepost has been removed! And then they are expected to go straight and keep straight.

Even children of tender age can be taught to share their toys and so learn to grow unselfish, for at the bottom of every wrong and crime is nearly always to be found the selfish nature.

The pity of it is, that nowadays Religion has to be spectacular in order to draw anyone’s interest. God never meant His Word to be made so in the beginning; the simpler it could be taught the better, and the more devout became the student. But now the radio gives, has to give, thrills in the broadcasting, or people think it tame and watery.

And the children are being trained to noise and excitement in their radio sketches that are slowly biasing their minds to unrest and feverishness, instead of sensible home-life themes. No wonder so many youngsters run away to find adventure for themselves; misled by hectic misrepresentations from the air, paid for by the “sponsors” of some face-cream, patent-medicine, beer, or other commodity. And so, each broadcaster, being afraid another will out-vie him in the thrills, does his best to make the kiddies of today the unsettled, neurotic adolescents of tomorrow.

Even babies in their cots can be trained not to cry and whimper if a toy is taken from them by another child to be played with; and to willingly share it and learn to like it! It is the “I want it, I want it!” that leads the youngster to become later a gentleman of fortune, who “wants” and gets what he wants at the point of a gun; or a girl who “wants” easy money and jewelry, and becomes a member of the underworld.

But the Golden Rule, if instilled from infancy, would check all such tendencies, for that Rule embraces all the commandments. It would help to eliminate most of these terrible Red Communistic agitators, whose sole aim is to stir up strife and mock at all Religion and better living, and who live only to create a mess of this beautiful world, and have no thought for the next one.

If the churches would start a Revival for the young and get them to join up, making a small charge to enroll each member, which I feel sure the parents would gladly pay, and give talks over the radio, with booklets of suitable hymns and songs, also given out at a small charge, so the little ones could sing in their own homes to the radio, I am sure there would be a universal revival of home life, for I am certain if the parents were asked to co-operate, they would do so for their own sakes as well as their children’s.

What a lovely world we could have in another generation! It is worth thinking about, and then starting, for not many nowadays think it worthwhile to go out of their way to help this beautiful old world and its inhabitants to make a better way of living. It is too much trouble.

To let children “express” themselves is one of the laziest and most cruel ways of bringing up a child. It is also “picking a rod” for the parent’s own back later on. For then it is too late for the children to learn to obey, and they become a trouble to teachers and others who have to do with them. That mode of bringing up means an incorrigible child and later still—what? Read the statistics of any Juvenile Court! And then when things seem hopeless and authority has to be called upon, the parents say, “I can’t understand my child; we have been the kindest of parents and have never crossed his (or her) will; we have always allowed him to ‘express’ himself, knowing things would work out all right later on.”

Then, it is too late, and the parents have only themselves to blame. And the irony of it is, when the youngster gets into trouble they turn around and say, “It’s all your fault, you didn’t care what we did, or where we went nights, as long as you weren’t bothered!”

Parents owe a duty to their little ones from babyhood up; that duty they must fulfill, or else! And you cannot blame the children, they naturally take advantage of any slackness or want of supervision on the part of their elders.

Better pictures for the juveniles, happier and better radio broadcasts (more worthwhile), and a more united home life, with co-operation on the parent’s side to help the little ones keep, and live, the Golden Rule, would work wonders in the next ten years alone, not to mention the following years. If only people would carry out, doing to others only what they want done to them, it would do away with murder, crime of every description, even perhaps War!

Of course there are beautiful talks to children on the radio, but a turn of the knob floods the room with the shots of gangsters and their doings, yells of airplane escapades, and the whole gamut of modern hard-fought-up thrills for the children, and there you are! The knob is turned to the more exciting broadcasts, and the angels listening, bow their heads—for another opportunity for doing good has gone.

I have, myself, started a little Club of Golden Rule-ites. The ages run from eight years to twelve, with one little pet of ten months.

The children come to tea, and we have games. I am lucky in having an organ as well as a piano so we have hymns and songs. I also read to them and talk to them, and their mothers tell me they really seem to try to remember the Golden Rule in their play and home life. And the book in which they sign their names (all except the baby) is one of my most prized possessions.

It has come to this, if the citizens of the United States want to live safer lives, free from criminal violence, the children must be trained to bring that about; it is the young who matter, and who will have the issue in their hands in the future.

Therefore give them some Ideal to live up to—they cannot bring themselves up. True, the children have Sunday Schools, but it is usually at an hour just before starting out on a Sunday picnic or jaunt, when their minds are taken up with wondering if they will be late for the start and other things connected with the coming treat. Especially in California is Sunday given up to an outing, and who can blame anybody for that, with such beautiful scenery to be enjoyed and so much life-giving sunshine.

The club women and clergy helped in a wonderful way to clean up the films. If they would interest themselves in a great “Revival” for children they would indeed be doing another grand work; for the important people of the future, the politicians, men of science, financial magnates, judges, presidents, all men of note in the future, are now, so to speak, in the nursery. Help them fit themselves to be law-abiding and unselfish citizens, by putting some Guide-Posts back again on their Road of Life! And thereby fit them for improving the way of living in the next generation, when those of this one have gone on to be judged and given what they have earned for themselves by their life here; for God’s Scales of Justice weigh with meticulous care,—“As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The bitterest cry in all languages is, “If I had only known!” for it is full of remorse and despair.

There are two kinds of men in the world; the men who plant trees for the benefit of future generations, and the men who sit back and say, “Why should I go to the trouble of providing shade for people I shall never see or know?”

Both men have to pass through the Portals at the “end of the journey” with nothing in their hands but the “records” of their lives!