Tour IN WARTIME BY ANGELO PATRI Doubleday, Doran Company, Inc. GARDEN CITY 1943 NEW YORK To the Newspapers of the United States HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN LONG AGO I went to the newspapers of the country for help in reaching the homes, the fathers, and mothers of the chil dren whose welfare had become my chief interest, my lifes task. To those papers I owe a great debt, for they have made it possible for me to teach, to interpret, to plead for the intelligent upbringing of our children. From the great audience of newspaper readers came many letters, some disputing, some agreeing, all asking for help in this job of rearing a nations children, all tremendously helpful to me in my self-imposed task. To every one of these letter writers, my cordial thanks. When this war began the letters increased in numbers and took on a note of anxiety beyond all that had gone be fore. How, they asked, are we to keep the children healthy and happy, at peace within themselves while the world burns over their heads What are we to say to them Tell us what to do, what to say, and how to say it effectively. I have tried to answer some of these questions. For many I have no answer save the hope that lies in human experience. viii HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN Children have great powers of endurance, great resiliency of spirit. They tend always to be good, to follow fine leader ship, and they have the ability to rise above difficulties that stagger grown-up people. Nature is on their side and God loves them. With a little help from us and a great deal of affection, they will come through ready for the day when peace reigns once more in this world and the United States stands like a bulwark preservingthe freedom of mankind. For that day we are training our children, we fathers and mothers and teachers, and I hope this book will help even a little. CONTENTS How This Book Came to Be Written . vii FOR PARENTS CHAPTER I Family Morale Is Your Job .... 3 II Time to Rediscover the Home .... 18 III Our Older Children in a Wartime World 27 IV The Home Extends into the Community 39 FOR TEACHERS CHAPTER I You Are Part of the Nations War Services 53 II The War Brings New Problems to the School 65 III School and Home Are Closer Today . . 77 FOR CHILDREN CHAPTER I You Are Citizen Soldiers 89 II Children Have War Work to Do ... 98 III Wartime Advice to Older Boys and Girls 107 FOR PARENTS CHAPTER I FAMILY MORALE IS YOUR JOB WAR is A TREMENDOUS, a terrible experience that penetrates into every fiber of life, affecting everything that people feel and think and do. We are now, despite all efforts to keep the peace, in the midst of the most shocking war this world has ever seen. We are engaged in a struggle for our national life, for all that is fine, all that is lovely, in our way of living. We are fighting with all we have and all we hoped to pass on to our children in a determined effort to save for them the good we have enjoyed. That good was handed down to us by men and women who bought it at a great price. The Pilgrim Fathers gave us freedom of worship and a tradition of sturdy character that knows no subtlety in right and wrong, only the forthrightness of dutiful behavior. The men and women of the thirteen colonies, the first states of these United States, gave us freedom of the indi vidual human being, the right to personal responsibility for government, the right to personal opinion and thefree ex pression of it, the right to labor and to possess its fruits