a name “which with that of Elgar represented the nation’s most individual output” and calls his “Atonement” “perhaps the finest passion music of modern times.”  Another critic speaks of his originality:  “Though surrounded by the influences that are at work in Europe today, he retained his individuality to the end, developing his style, however, and evincing new ideas in each succeeding work.  His untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, a short life—­like those of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Hugo Wolf—­has robbed the world of one of its noblest singers, one of those few men of modern times who found expression in the language of musical song, a lyricist of power and worth.”

But the tributes did not rest with the artist; with peculiar unanimity they sought his “sterling character,” “the good husband and father,” the “staunch and loyal friend.”  And perhaps I cannot better end these hesitating words than with that tribute from one who called this master, friend, and whose lament cried in the night with more of depth and passion than Alfred Noyes is wont in his self-repression to voice: 

    “Through him, his race, a moment, lifted up
      Forests of hands to beauty, as in prayer,
    Touched through his lips the sacramental cup
      And then sank back, benumbed in our bleak air.”

Yet, consider:  to many millions of people this man was all wrong. First, he ought never to have been born, for he was the mulatto son of a white woman. Secondly, he should never have been educated as a musician,—­he should have been trained, for his “place” in the world and to make him satisfied therewith. Thirdly, he should not have married the woman he loved and who loved him, for she was white and the niece of an Oxford professor. Fourthly, the children of such a union—­but why proceed?  You know it all by heart.

If he had been black, like Paul Laurence Dunbar, would the argument have been different?  No.  He should never have been born, for he is a “problem.”  He should never be educated, for he cannot be educated.  He should never marry, for that means children and there is no place for black children in this world.

* * * * *

In the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and faith.  All words and all thinking lead to the child,—­to that vast immortality and the wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents.  Such thought as this it was that made the Master say of old as He saw baby faces: 

“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.”