Imagine taking your innocent, trusting children by the hand and relinquishing them to a life of bondage. As unthinkable as that may sound, an account in one of my children's books, "A Child's History of the World" (Hillyer, 1924), told of this very act during the Children's Crusade of 1212:
Children from all over France left their homes and their mothers and fathers – it seems strange to us that [the parents] would let them start off on such a trip – and marched south to the Mediterranean Sea. … [They] expected the waters of the sea to part and allow them to march on dry land to Jerusalem … but the waters did not part. Sailors offered to take the children to Jerusalem in their ships. … But it turned out that these sailors were really pirates, and as soon as they got the children on board their ships they steered them straight into … the very land of their enemies. … Here, it is said, the pirates sold the children as slaves.
We have virtually the same thing occurring in our culture today. ...
