Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/358

ties in that city. Doubtless many are useful and active but if we may judge by the experience of other countries, it is probable that a careful analysis of the work for children would show small, separate, ineffective, struggling institutions carried on undoubtedly with great self-sacrifice; but capable of much more useful service for the commenwealth if working together in a general cooperating plan.

Bohemia possesses near Prague a successful instance of boarding-out normal children or colony care, as it is called there, which is sure to prove a leading example in the present emergency.
Dr. Alice Masaryk Petting a Siberian Bear.The taking of homeless children into families to rear may well be urged as a patriotic service of the highest order. Much good could be done by an endowment for this purpose like the Frank Fund in Chicago, which has been in successful but quiet operation for many years.

Great progress has already been made in providing schools in the provinces where they are most needed but it will require time and effort to bring all parts of the republic to the high level of education already attained by Bohemia.

It did not require the wonderful photographs of the great Sokol Celebration, now being shown here, to make a recent visitor to Czechoslovakia acknowledge the physical, mental and moral value of the characteristic national athletic training.

The ardor for universal education and for physical vigor are among the signs of the democratic development which will take place as the country is allowed to proceed undisturbed in accord with its own genius.

Another good augury for the future of child welfare lies in the new universal suffrage, the absolute equality of opportunity afforded men and women. Women are not wiser than men, but their part of the world’s work in rearing the young and keeping the home is now for the first time receiving legal recognition, and already they are beginning to show that out of their experience they have new and invaluable contributions to offer to the State.

When I saw them going together to vote on Sunday morning in a great city throughout which the decorum was as perfect in the polling places as in the churches, it seemed the beginning of a new era of simple democracy which we foolishly have though unattainable. If democracy means anything, it means the growth of opportunity for each individual, the end of fatal-