BOBBIE AND THE WAR (CLASSIC REPRINT)

Excerpt from Bobbie and the WarPerhaps it was his sensitiveness to the suffering of animals which led us to avoid talking about the Great War when he was near. Perhaps it was because we felt, like most American parents, that the War was monstrous, insensate, something too horrible to bring into the consciousness of a happy whole-souled boy of fourteen. We were thankful that a regula tion of the local board of education forbade the discussion of the War in school rooms. And we tried to keep away from him the more terrible of the pictures which soon filled the illustrated papers.But in the two years of warfare he has grown to take an interest in things. At times he read the daily newspapers and looked through the illustrated weeklies. He became interested in the War in spite of us and occasionally dropped a remark which showed he was forming opinions upon it. He shared his spending money with the Belgians whenever the family took up a collection from the childrens banks and the parents bank accounts for relief work.And then like every normal American child he asked questions about the War. At first we put him off with those general colorless and neutral answers which parents are so skilled in framing. But we found that he was getting false notions of the War from other sources. We reached the conclusion that if we did not furnish the truth he might never get it. And thus we set about answering carefully some of his questions. Six of these questions and answers are here given. They are arranged in a logical order rather than in the haphazard conversation of family life.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged co