SELECTED PATRIOTIC READINGS FOR SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADES AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS COMPILED BY EMMA SERL TEACHER TRAINING SCHOOL, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI AND WILLIAM J. PELO, A.M. (HARV.) FORMERLY, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SWAMPSCOTT, WITH INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES W. ELIOT PRESIDENT EMERITUS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY THE GREGG PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the use of copyrighted material grateful acknowledgment 66 INTRODUCTION DEAR MR. PELO: I HOPE the children who use your Patriotic Reader will ask themselves what patriotism really means. There is much vague talk about patriotism; and gregarious sentiment on the subject can be easily perverted to wrong uses. Therefore every child should somehow get a clear idea of what love of country implies in the patriot's soul and should lead to in the patriot's conduct. The love of country is a compound of many elements; but it is always a combination of loves of the places and scenes among which we grew up, of the father, mother, brothers, and sisters with whom our infancy was passed, of the sky and the weather at the home of our youth, and of the natural and artificial environments of our plays and our labors. A wandering life, with no stability of home or of employment, is unfavorable to the development of the warmest love of country; but warm and eager love of country may be felt by persons living under different forms of government and social organization. Poor and uneducated people feel it quite as strongly as the well-to-do and the educated, though they may not be so conscious of the feeling and of its effects on themselves. The subjects of a king or an emperor may feel it intensely, although it may not affect their conduct so strongly as it does the conduct of free men in a republic. In action, patriotism leads to self-sacrifice, to cooperation in promoting the interest and welfare of fellow countrymen, and to whatever labors the patriot believes may make his country freer, wiser, and happier in the future. Sincerely yours, Charles M. Eliot |