ing that the best obedience is voluntary. No error could be more fatal. As soon as the young man gets out into the wor'd, whatever calling he may pursue, he finds that the readiness to obey cheerfully the orders of those set over him is the golden key which will open for him the door of promotion. When he in his turn rises to the point where he issues the orders, he will find that half his difficulties and half the obstacles set in the way of his own further success are due to the disobedience of those under him.

To the mind of a youth properly trained no pleasure should be greater than the sense of duty well performed, or orders faithfully executed. Any one who has been for years under the orders of others, or who for years has had hundreds of people under his orders can testify that so far as contentment of mind is concerned, he has derived more happiness from service well rendered by him than from service well rendered to him.

In civil life no quality draws men closer together than the sense of voluntary obedience. It establishes the spirit of confidence and trust; it develops a feeling of mutual helpfulness; it simplifies every task which falls to the man who gives an order and the man who takes it.

One has only to reflect upon the history of the past four years to realize what obedience means in military life. Neither the patriotism of the soldier, his courage, his skill, nor his endurance, could offset the disaster which would follow a failure in obedience. What courage could win from the enemy in a year, disobedience would give back to him in a day.

Another defect too common in our schools is their failure to teach respect for age and experience. It must be clear to every one that in our every-day affairs, the importance of youth decreases as we ascend the scale of

employment; and inexperience can never in itself be a recommendation. Yet nothing is more characteristic of many of our school graduates than the contempt they feel for their elders and the readiness with which they discount the value of experience. It is to be hoped that one of the effects of the war will be to modify this attitude. The direction of the war both on its political and on its military side, not only with the Central Powers but with the Allies, was in the hands of men who were past middle life. Few names familiar to the public, either of soldiers, sailors, or statesmen, are those of men under fifty. And when we seek the most famous figures of the war we find in the main men over fifty-five and some over seventy. Foch was sixty-nine; Haig was fifty-nine; Pershing was sixty; Joffre was sixty-eight; Petain sixty-four; Hindenburg seventy-three; Ludendorf fifty-five; Mackensen seventy-one; Lloyd George fiftyseven; Clemenceau seventy-nine. It will be well if the lesson clearly conveyed by these names and figures is not lost on the school-teachers and on the children under their care. The character side of school-teaching has been discussed at some length, because-and it cannot be repeated too often-without character building nothing else that a school can do for a child is of very much value.

Turning from this aspect of the matter to the question of the school curriculum, the lack of skilled mechanics in the country and the oversupply of unskilled labor in normal times bear eloquent testimony to our neglect of practical training. As a large percentage of our children must in the nature of things enter manual occupations it should need no argument to prove that industrial training should form a part of their schooling. Great as has been the improvement in late years, much more re

mains to be done. Stress, therefore, should be laid on only two points; first, that no child, whatever his future career is to be, can be otherwise than greatly benefited by learning the elements of a mechanical trade; second, that vocational training in the schools will go far to help out our very limited and unsatisfactory system of apprenticeship.

The importance of this question has been greatly magnified by the nature of the difficulties which we have had to face since the war. With all the European countries placed under the greatest pressure to speed up their industries and to extend their foreign trade, so that they may not be utterly swamped by their war debts, the United States finds itself facing a trade competition. keener than any which it has yet encountered. If we are to do no better than hold our own, we shall have to exert ourselves to the utmost to develop the best that is in us, and the school is the right place in which to begin this task. In spite of the new emphasis upon science and business, our universities reflect some of the weaknesses of our school system. In them also there is too great a lack of definite aim, too little emphasis on fine ideals, too great a tendency to condemn what is severely practical and to laud what is merely subsidiary or ornamental.

Although improvement has been made of late years, in some branches of university teaching, notably in economics and political science, the instruction is even yet not only often out of touch with the actualities of our economic and political life, but, in the interest of socalled academic freedom, it is too much dominated by the spirit of the crank and the demagogue. Even when the subject of instruction does not lend itself to wild theorizing-as, for example, geology and mining-insuf

ficient attention is paid to field work. When we consider how these subjects have been studied in Germany, the walking tours in company with professors, the frequent visits to mines, the thousand explanations given of the phenomena observed, we cannot but feel surprised that there should not have grown up in the United States a national system of vocation classes in which student and teacher should more frequently forget their books and study things at first hand in mill and mine, on the hillside, and in the valley.

The repetition may be tiresome but we must run that risk and state again our belief that the most serious criticism to be brought against the university as well as the school is the small part that it plays in laying that firm basis upon which a lasting superstructure of culture or efficiency, or of both, can be built. The facts taught are of secondary importance, for a young man who has learned all the facts, but has failed to learn the lesson of truth in thought and in action, has missed the rarest prize in life.

The problem of life, and the problems of the nation, are too complex to be solved by rote or formula. Our crying need in the future will be, as it is in the present, for men.

INDEX