282 



The Review of Reviews. 



THE CHILD'S NEED OF PLAY. 



A Novel Creed for New York. 

 The Chautauquan publishes the following extracts 

 from a creed drawn up by the Playground League of 

 New York. I heartily commend it to all who, in 

 Great Britain or elsewhere, are interested in the welfare 

 of the child : — 



We believe that a city child needs a place to play, things to 

 play with, and someone to take a fatherly or motherly interest 

 in its play. 



We believe that a playground should be made attractive to 

 •win the child ; varied in equipment to hold the child, who 

 needs constant change ; and supervised by directors trained in 

 child culture, who can care for this cliild garden, as an expert 

 florist will care lor his llowers, developing the best in each. 



We believe that family life should be encour.aged in the 

 playground, avoiding the formal grouping according to age. 



We believe that normal play on swings, seesaws, and other 

 such apparatus, or with simple games, such as ball and tag, in 

 varied forms, or with toys such as toy brooms, doll house, etc., 

 to be a better preparation for normal life th.in exciting competi- 

 tions and complicated games requiring constant instruction. 



We believe that playground work where the character of the 

 child may be A'j< moulded through skilful suggestion, informally 

 given, should be in the hands of persons of the highest character 

 and best 'training, who will make this a life work — a yearly 

 graded salary as in other professional work being essential to 

 attract such workers. 



We believe that the park playgrounds should be open on 

 week day mornings as well as after school, and under super- 

 vision, so that the mothers and babies, and physically weak and 

 mentally defective children, may have opportunity for outdoor 

 play when the grounds are not crowded with school children. 



We believe that playgrounds should be developed into 

 centres of civic usefulness, beginning in the care of their own 

 play space by the children, this extending to the adjacent park 

 property, and thus leading to an interest and understanding of 

 far-reaching questions. 



A SOCIALIST PLEA FOR PURITANISM. 



In the Socialist Review Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., 

 puts in a plea for Puritanism. He admits that Puri- 

 tanism is rough ; it does not worship the eye and the 

 belly ; it does not fall into the error of putting history 

 on an economic basis ; it has the insight to know the 

 devil when it sees him, and the showman when it sees 

 him ; it has no sympathy with revolutions that are 

 produced by chatter. Very decidedly Mr. Macdonald 

 says : — 



The Labour movement must welcome Puritanism if it is to be 

 any good, or even if it is to Last. And the reasons are these 

 amongst others : 



Our young men who join us full of enthusiasm against the 

 present crushing order of society will never be disciplined and 

 hardened for the fight, made wary .against its difl'iculties, and 

 sobered in preparation for its triumphs by the vanity and mental 

 exhilaration of tall and smart talk, of platform bravado, of 

 literary swashbuckling. The man who is to do anything in the 

 Labour and Socialist movement must begin by getting himself 

 in hand. He has to serve an apprenticeship in mental and 

 moral discipline. The I'urit.an can drudge as well as strut. 

 Then the I'uritan spirit protects the movement against rascals of 

 all types. With the I'urilan, character must always comit. 

 The Puritan can no more .ask what lias private character to do 

 with public life than he can a^k what has theft to do with 

 honesty. The I'urilan view is that personality does count, and 

 that sterling oualitics count in personality. .\ man who has 

 been unfaithful to a woman may be a. fine mob orator, but he is 

 untrustworthy as a representative of men, and is unworthy of 

 any position of public trust and responsibility. A man who 



professes the morality and the kindly humanity of Socialism, 

 but who reproduces in his own actions all the injustice and un- 

 generous treatment meted out by Capitalism, is still an un- 

 rcgenerate. 



Mr. Macdonald further insists that Puritanism 

 makes life artistic, gives life a rich background, throws 

 up its lights and shades, and gives to the most trivial 

 incident a setting in the Eternal. 



Even the Puritan .Sabbath was an apprenticeship in not a few 

 attainments which would be of great value to us now. It 

 taught the mind to surmount dilTiculties ; it imposed the task of 

 self-control upon it. One sombre day in the week is not a bad 

 thing for men who, like Socialists, have to carry on a war 

 whichcalls for moral weight .as well as lingual readiness, which 

 asks for able men as well as smart men. 



Perhaps one may detect the occasion for this robust 

 outburst in the sentence : — 



About the new British .Socialist Party and similar movements 

 there is a variety of pose like what one sees in the women at a 

 fashionable .Society dinner, nr, later in the evening, on the 

 streets. 



PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE. 



In La Revue of February ist M. Jean Vienot replies 

 to the article by M. Onesime Reclus, in the first 

 December number of the same review, on the Protest- 

 ants in France. 



In this article M. Reclus drew attention to the small 

 number of Protestants in France, and emphasised their 

 former great influence and their great superiority. 

 Compared to the Catholics they were the salt of France. 

 M. Vienot replies, it is no secret that M. Reclus, the 

 son of a well-known pastor, was a Protestant by birth, 

 but that now he is no longer attached to the Protestant 

 faith. Some of his facts are incorrect and others 

 cannot be verified. He attributes to the Protestants 

 of the past the qualities which he refuses to acknow- 

 ledge in those of to-day. When he says that Protest- 

 ants in general have been spoilt by prosperity, he 

 merely repeats a phrase from the Soleil, but does not 

 establish a fact. 



M. Reclus writes of the Free Church of sixty years 

 ago ; but every one knows that the Free Church, 

 like other Churches, is tiffected by the ferments of the 

 day. Criticism and science have their place beside the 

 faith, and the official journal, the Eglise I.ihre, openly 

 acknowledged this quite recently. The statistics 

 which M. Reclus quotes are some of 1903. There are 

 no reliable up-to-date statistics dealing with the 

 question. There may be legions where Protestantism 

 is decliniiii;. owing lo the migrations of the people, or 

 depopiiliiioti. In certain small places Protestant 

 families are more numerous than others, and " total 

 disappearance " is simply displacement. 



M. Vienot thinks the PVench Protestants are too 

 much divided, but these divisions have never succeeded 

 in destroying tlie fundamental unity of French Pro- 

 testantism. A diversity "f sects is a proof of intense 

 life and conscious indixidualisation of things pertaining 

 lo the soul. 'I'herc are two things, says M. Vienot in 

 conclusion, which the world will never renounce — 

 religion and liberty. And Protestantism will always 

 triumph when its late is united with that of liberty. 



