Illiteracy is the worst blot on the national child welfare escutcheon. Whether it can be wiped off without aid from the federal government is an open question. For myself I wish we could use the fifty-fifty plan with some freedom for aid and stimulus to the states, for stated periods, not as permanent contributions. Congress might review every seven years and determine to cease or continue, as the results justified -politics laid aside. Great progress has been made in some of the states in the last few years, although the figures of the draft warn us of, the enormous task which this generation has to perform in educating young adults as well as children. There is hardly a state whose finances would not be strained if the appropriation really needed for elementary education were made immediately.

No surer sign of the trend of state legislation toward better provision can be found than in the code commissions which have now been appointed in twenty-four states for the purpose of reviewing and improving legislation regarding children. Every one of these commissions has become aware of the child welfare legislation and standards in our other states and has endeavored to secure the best standards for its own state. These commissions may be temporary, but law is not static in our country, and the children's codes will be reviewed again and again. These commissions are really engaged in legal research for the immediate use of their respective states, and thus we come around to the same proposition for the government and for the state, that only by painstaking study, by determined effort to know the facts and put them clearly before people and make them of practical use do we secure any real progress. By this method honestly pursued, we are on the path of democratic progress which cannot lead anywhere except toward better opportunity for life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness for every child. In fact one dares to hope that-not in our day but before the history of our country is all written-we shall add another clause and say that the rights of the child include not only the pursuit of happiness but its attainment.

OUR DUTY TO THE CHILDREN OF EUROPE

Homer Folks, Secretary, New York State Charities Aid Association, Special
Representative in Europe of the American Red Cross

I must begin with a protest that the program committee has shown itself to be very far from 100 per cent American, because in the make-up of the printed program for this evening, it did not put the children of America first. I know our representative in England, Mr. Harvey, would not approve of that. The printed title is "Our Duty to the Children of Europe," but I am never quite comfortable, and never efficient, in discussing other people's duties. So that I would rather tell you a few facts in regard to Europe and let the question of duty follow of itself. I think it would be safer and more effective.

The first thing to be said about the children of Europe today is that they are not so badly off as they were. You are entitled to know that during the past eight months the condition of the people of Europe, in all the countries, in all the cities (except that we do not know anything about Russia), has slowly but definitely improved, and continues to improve. That statement should be followed immediately, lest it be misunderstood, as we are so prone to be optimistic, by the further statement

GENERAL SESSIONS

that when things began to improve they had a tremendously long distan get back to where they were before the war, even judged by European It is still true, after nearly a year's improvement (which is recognized by all t abroad, that hundreds of thousands of children will go to bed tonight i with a pain in their stomach instead of food; that hundreds of thousands of next winter, in spite of what can be done, will go to bed to get warm; and be covers are thin, if there be covers at all, they will shiver almost as much at they did during the day. It is also true that tens of thousands of children in get sick and die without seeing either a doctor or a nurse, But the worst conditions is slowly passing, there is progress, and no country in Europe, ac to present indications, is facing towards a breakdown; no country is facing an in no country are they headed toward worse conditions, but every where toward conditions. We may believe that, in the absence of any great setback, if the no more war, if progress can be allowed to continue, in perhaps a year from there will be enough food to go around, there will be enough fuel for Europe to its railroads and to cook its food, and enough clothes for its children, even with American aid. But after you have said that it remains further to be said immediat and most emphatically, that the widespread effects of years of suffering and hards) Jack of food, lack of warmth, lack of care, and lack of everything, have left deep mal upon the children of Europe, which only the utmost effort, the most intensive ch welfare work, along health lines, along preventive lines, along constructive lines distinguished from emergency lines, for at least a period of ten years, can remove. An It is further to be said that in all that great belt of the war zone, stretching hundred and thousands of miles, through Belgium, France, Italy, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia Roumania, and up through Russia and the Baltic states, scores of miles wide in all that region, children and their parents still suffer from all sorts of sub standard living and will continue to do so, and that there will be no real complete reconstruction in those areas for at least twenty years.

This general statement, this effort to sum it all up, may become a little more definite, if I refer more in detail to a few of the countries I have visited during the past four months I visited Poland, Serbia, Cancho Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Fathonia Let us begin first with Poland. We are apt to think that each of theas countries la homogeneous; that conditions which prevail in one part of the country necessarily prevail in all others; that there is free interchange of food, fuel, clothing, and that there is a reasonable degree of governmental efficiency in equalizing conditions and needs in different parts of the country. That is not at all true. Hardly a statement can be made about Poland generally, which is true of all parts of Poland, You must remember that until recently a considerable part of Poland was German for many years, that a considerable part of it was Austrian, and that a larger part still was Russian. A member of this conference who has been a social worker in Poland for a year and a half gave me my best clue to the present general situation in Poland, Her work here had been the care of dependent children, and she suggested to me that Poland at present is like a family of three boys who, when very young, were adopted by three different foster homes because their home had gone to pieces. One boy was adopted by a German family, one by an Austrian family, and one by a Russian family When they arrived at years of maturity, by a chance circumstance the home was re established and the three brothers were brought together. Great was the joy

of the brothers in the reunion. They looked forward to a happy home life. But they had no sooner been brought into close association in one household than they discovered things about each other which they did not understand nor quite like. The German thought the boy reared in the Russian home-well, he wished he bathed more often, had better manners and was more concerned about making a living, about where food and clothes were coming from, and how to contribute his share toward the running of the household. The Russian thought uncomplimentary things about the German-raised Pole; he recognized he was a skilled farmer, but he wished he sometimes took a little rest, and could be depended upon a little more. And both thought the Austrian Pole undependable and flamboyant. It was some time before they could adjust themselves to each other, in order to begin to address themselves to their common problems, which were very real and very pressing. That describes present conditions in Poland.

There are twenty-five million people in Poland, and all but a few of them have not enough food to eat and will not have for another year. They are not starving to death. but they are starving to disease. You can verify that easily in either of two ways, If you go to the food ministry you will find as chief assistant one of the most competent of American economists, Dr. E. Dana Durand, formerly director of our census bureau; and he will pull out some formidable tables which show how much food they raised this year, how much they have been able to buy from anybody who would give them credit, how much they hope to get from Roumania if they can but re-establish their railroads so as to bring food to the border, how they hope to get credit from Belgium for wheat; and on the other side he will show you how much food the people of Poland ordinarily consume and how much they need to consume on the lowest basis consistent with just getting along; and then you would see at the bottom of the sheet a substantial deficit. I do not recall the figures, but it runs into many thousands of tons still short, with no visible evidence as to where it will come from. That means that practically all of Poland (remembering that German Poland has the largest share) is on short rations today, and will be for another year. Or you can arrive at a judgment by the intensive method, which always needs to be used; that is, to go into the homes in Poland, in the cities and towns, and after establishing friendly relations, find out how they are getting along. We did that, Dr. Durand and I and a Polishspeaking American trained nurse. In the little city of Siedlice, forty miles east of Warsaw, in the early evening, we went into a home which consisted of a single room about ten by twelve feet large. We had inquired where the poor people lived, and some boys took us to this as the home of a poor workingman, his wife and two children. There was a tiny bit of a stove, one very narrow single bed, a little table, and two boxes for chairs. Upon the table was a plate of boiled potatoes. I said to the mother, after becoming acquainted, "I suppose you boys get dinner at the American kitchen' -which serves a meal a day to a million and a quarter of children in Poland. She said, "Yes, they get their dinner from the American uncle." I said, "I suppose they also have other meals at home." "Yes, they have other food at home." I asked what they ordinarily had. "Well, potatoes." I asked, "What do you and your husband find you can buy in the markets?" "Well, potatoes." "And bread, I suppose." "Oh, no. We cannot afford bread. We never have it." (Bread costs five times as much as in America.) I said, "What do you have besides potatoes?" "Well,” she said, "I always look around and once in a while I find something I can buy, but

generally speaking, it is potatoes." I do not think any physiologist has yet termed potatoes the staff of life. I suppose she felt a certain sympathetic tone in my voice as I asked the last question, and she, with just the faintest trace of a smile, said, "We are getting along all right. The poor people live further down the road. They cannot pay the rents around here." I thought to myself that if that was a fair measure of the quality of the working classes of Poland, between whom and the aristocratic classes there is so little appreciation and sympathy, the future of Poland might be regarded as hopeful.

I went to Vilna to see the food stations there. It is not yet settled as to whether Vilna and its region is a part of Poland, or whether it belongs to Lithuania. That is still to be decided. There were many food kitchens, I was told, and I set out to visit two of them. It happened to be Palm Sunday. I found one in the basement of the university. I saw sitting in the front row a woman whose face attracted me. It seemed to me an embodiment of hope, and patience, and suffering. She had a little baby in arms, a little boy by her side. I asked her to let me see the baby, which she did with all the pride any mother could have in her baby. I asked her what she was able to get for food besides the meal a day she received at the American kitchen, a meal of six hundred calories. She said that before the baby came she used to go out and work and earn money, not much, but a little, and then she could buy some food; that her husband went into the army at the time of the last fight with the Bolshevik, and had not been heard from since, and now she could not work and all she and the baby and the little boy had was the food they received at the American kitchen. A representative of the American Relief Administration who was present immediately said she should have more, and that he would send her a $10 food-package the next day. Then we went to a kitchen in the poorest section of the city, where we felt sure the people had no resources beyond what they received from the American kitchen for their children. We approached the place where the kitchen is, and it was perfectly quiet, nobody about, and no children. We rang the bell and the manager appeared, a Polish woman, who told us she did not open because it was Palm Sunday, a holiday. That again is Poland-thinking of the holiday part of it, not thinking of the elements of first necessity. When we got back to the hotel in Vilna, which is supposed to be in as poor a condition as any city in Poland, we found the street in front of the hotel full of women, rather well dressed, cheerful, quite active; and we wondered what it was all about. I thought probably there had been some new turn of the political wheel. We heard it was a "protest" gathering, that a few days before, the interallied commission had ruled that if there were to be a plebiscite in Vilna the women would not be allowed to vote, and the women had turned out to make a demonstration and demand that they should be allowed to vote. They pushed their way into the hotel where the commission was, and got a promise that they would confer with the women that evening about the possiblity of reopening the question. So much for Poland.

I should like to speak about the three little countries to the north, Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia. In the order named, they extend from the Baltic sea to the Bolshevik line, from East Prussia north, almost to Petrograd. I found these countries had been much harder hit by the war than I had supposed. After traveling thousands of miles from the barbed wire, trenches, and destruction in Belgium and France, I had hoped that one would be free from these evidences of the destruction of war.

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ot at all. It was here on every hand. The city of Riga, which I had thought of a Russian town of one-story wooden buildings, I found was a perfectly modern city th a wonderful park system, a beautiful opera house, and that the poor lived in sixory stone buildings; it had been a city of considerable culture and of much prosperity. efore the war Riga had a population of 550,000. It is the capital of Latvia. Before e war it had 337 factories. Today it has 12 factories and a population of 215,000. he government of Latvia has practically no resources except printing paper money. he country grows flax and has plenty of timber, but just now nobody will buy flax nd nobody wants timber, and all they can do is to print more money. The ruble worth fifty cents, theoretically; but it now takes 440 to make an American dollar. wondered what these Letts (i.e., Letvians) and Esthonians and Lithuanians would bok like. The Letts looked a good deal more like the Esthonians. The Esthonians bok like the Finns. The Finns look like the Swedes, but with a touch of the Mongoian. I wondered what the government of Latvia would be like. I was presented to he Prime Minister. I found he spoke English perfectly and had formerly been the ssistant professor of agriculture of the University of Nebraska. He has all sorts of American ideas and is most anxious to send representatives of his people here to earn farming and business methods.

I wish I could reproduce for you the child-feeding stations, the "American uncle," in Riga, a city where now 33 per cent of all the children are fed at the American kitchens. You may go out on any street in Riga at half-past eleven o'clock and see children coming out in groups from the alleys and side streets, coming into the large streets, almost in procession, and then waiting in line. You do not have to ask where the kitchen is—just follow the children. There was no playing, no fighting, no delaying; this was the important event of the entire day; they were absolutely bent on a particular thing. They knew right where they were going, and ran no chances of being late. Each carried a dish and I wish you could see the variety of dishes. After they had had their food and eaten it on the premises you saw them going back home. They did not quarrel, nor fight, nor run, nor jump. They had just the look of a tired business man who, after a five-course dinner, puts on his slippers, sits down before the fireplace and picks up his evening newspaper, thoroughly satisfied. Every child, from his looks, was saying that God's in his Heaven and all's right with the world.

Lithuania, in appearance, is a country of poor whites. The buildings are unpainted, wooden; and thin-looking hogs wander in the yard. Latvia is like southern Michigan. I felt perfectly at home there-fine farm buildings, shrubbery, and flowers about the homes, every evidence of former prosperity. Esthonia is more the Canadian Northwest, bustling with large factory buildings and lumber yards, but at the present time they do a very small part of their former business, and their children are feeding at the American kitchens. Politically these three Baltic countries seem stable enough, but they are the children of Russia, and I am sure if the great mother should turn over in bed at night, particulary if she had a nightmare, these three children might easily be smothered without her knowing it.

Serbia I had visited before. I have rarely had a pleasanter experience than my second visit to Serbia, so far as general external appearances are concerned. I do not know how the improvement has been brought about, because they are short of men and horses and oxen and tools and seed, but the land is cultivated and fruitful,