The Occasional Garden
The Sheep
The Oversight
Hyacinth
The Image of the Lost Soul
The Purple of the Balkan Kings
The Cupboard of the Yesterdays
For the Duration of the War




THE TOYS OF PEACE


"Harvey," said Eleanor Bope, handing her brother a cutting from a London
morning paper of the 19th of March, "just read this about children's
toys, please; it exactly carries out some of our ideas about influence
and upbringing."

"In the view of the National Peace Council," ran the extract, "there are
grave objections to presenting our boys with regiments of fighting men,
batteries of guns, and squadrons of 'Dreadnoughts.' Boys, the Council
admits, naturally love fighting and all the panoply of war . . . but that
is no reason for encouraging, and perhaps giving permanent form to, their
primitive instincts. At the Children's Welfare Exhibition, which opens
at Olympia in three weeks' time, the Peace Council will make an
alternative suggestion to parents in the shape of an exhibition of 'peace
toys.' In front of a specially-painted representation of the Peace
Palace at The Hague will be grouped, not miniature soldiers but miniature