It is difficult to realize what this means in a statistical table, for, as Carlyle remarks, "Masses indeed, and yet singular to say, if thou follow them into their garrets and hutches, the masses consist of units, every unit of whom has his own heart and sorrows!" The line of Moslem children if they stood together, holding hands, would stretch exactly twice around the globe's circumference of 40,000,000 metres. The Moslem children of India alone, marching with hands on each other's shoulders, would reach in one unbroken procession fifteen times the distance from New York to Chicago; or if we count the Moslem children in India and in Persia together, we have nearly 29,000,000 children under fifteen years of

YOUNG GIRL AND BABY OF THE MESSERIA TRIBE, KORDOFAN On the border-marches of Islam. Notice the amulet worn by the older child, her jewelry, and the curious braiding of her hair.

age. According to the census of 1910 the whole family of childhood in the United States was only a little larger, namely 29,499,136. The problem of child welfare in this section of the Moslem world alone, therefore, is equally large statistically as it is for the United States. Yet in the latter case we have a Christian environment, free, compulsory education, and large expenditures for the betterment of childhood. In the case of India, we know that 962 per cent of Moslem adults are illiterate, and that no provision is made for the masses of its Moslem childhood for either intellectual or moral training.

One-third of all the babies born in Africa wear Moslem charms or talismans around their necks, like the young girl and baby of the Messeria tribe, Kordofan, in our picture. And in many cases this is their only clothing! In Kashmir alone there are more Moslem children than the total population of the great city of Liverpool; while the number of Moslem children found in China is a million more than the entire population of Chicago. The world of childhood represented in this volume would fill seventeen cities as large as London, and yet even here the comparisons seem inadequate to impress one with the need and the opportunity of these little ones for whom Christ died. In the case of Algeria we have fuller statistics carefully collated by mis

sionary workers. In that one Moslem country there are 710,488 native boys and girls between the ages of five and fourteen, and 331,287 baby boys under five years of age. If God should call us out, as He did Abraham, to tell the stars, we would have to count all of those visible to the naked eye in the whole starry vault one hundred times over to reach the number of Moslem boys in Algeria alone. He Who healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds, Who telleth the number of the stars and calleth them all by their names, knows the name also of every Moslem child in Algeria and throughout the world. He not only knows them by name because He is their Father, but He loves them. His own word assures us, "Whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me."

What the term "Moslem childhood" includes becomes evident also when we consider areas as well as populations. All of North Africa and nearly all of Central and Western Asia are dominated by Islam. Between the nearer and farther East, north of India and south of the Siberian steppes, stretches the region known as Central Asia, the roof of the world, where three great empires, India, Russia, and China, meet. Here three great religions have struggled for the mastery, and one after the other held supreme for centuries; and although Buddhism and Christianity still