religiously taught that his business consisted in doing his work well; that he must not hesitate to give his life if the state demanded it; that he must avoid meddling with the government, social ideas, and education, for that was not his affair. He was taught to serve; the upper classes were taught to rule and do the thinking. Hans would as little think of asserting his ideas in another sphere as he would of abolishing food and drink, or committing murder in his family. By such a system the economic world was equipped with sturdy workers, but poor Hans, the boy, who often hoped and dreamed of a freer life, such as he had heard the boys in America had, was forgotten and molded into a machine. The system, not content with his body, crushed his soul until he became a mere unthinking mechanism of a huge system-the state. Before the war we had somehow lost the drift of events. Few men saw ahead clearly and sufficiently to know whither we were tending. I remember hearing an address by an educator, and during the course of his remarks the speaker asserted that agricultural schools were for the purpose of training men to become owners of land and thinking, intelligent, useful citizens, and not mere farm mechanics; but first of all good citizens, intellectually free and capable of thinking. For this remark he was taken to task by some wealthy retired farmers, who owned large tracts of land and desired schools that would develop the boys of the neighborhood into good, steady laborers. So complacent in their rights, so smug in their desires, so imbued with the idea of fitting boys to become laborers and mechanics had many men of affairs become that the philosophy of education was forgotten or hooted down. This war has taught us that each boy, each individual, must be trained for some trade, but also for much more. He must be trained as an individual, as a citizen, indeed, as a prospective ruler in the affairs of the nation. He must not become simply a cog in a great economic machine, whose destinies he has no part in determining. The system which is guided entirely from the top may make an efficient state but it produces few men. It loses touch with the masses and by such a course its rulers are certain to blunder in their judgment and involve the nation in ruin. When

you select boys at an early age and train them for a trade by a limited system of education that fits them for one thing only, you forget the mission of man's life. You rob the boy of that Godgiven hope for which America was created to give men: the right to have an opportunity for self-development and advancement; the power to break the chains that bind man to poverty, to an unworthy life which is mere existence. What is more unhappy, more sad, than to see a human creature who from childhood has toiled at a trade like a slave chained to a galley. The slave is lured by thoughts of final freedom, but the worker has no escape. A broadened and educated mind may escape the routine and drudgery of the day by projecting itself into pleasant avocations. We seldom tire of the tasks we love, no matter if they are laborious. It is this phase which I think is so important and yet so little emphasized.

There are some men who may be better off under the European system, but the best men are not. The men who lead and have led America were not trained that way. Our trade schools have not trained men as technically as the European schools have, nor have we been stratified socially as the Europeans, but there was a tendency in that direction. The son of a laborer was being influenced to enter a trade as soon as possible. In the course of a few years he had learned something about a trade and was able to obtain a position. The wages were small but tempting to a boy who wishes to be independent and have some money to spend. If, at the end of a year or more, he should tire of his trade, what is he to do? His time was spent on a trade he will never use, his money is gone. The courses which he pursued do not fit him for a course in law, medicine, or pharmacy, for they were too narrow, too technical. To enter a university he must have Latin, French, or German, and a good equipment in the liberal arts and sciences. Many vocational schools teach science as applied science, which is often worse than nothing if the teacher is unskillful. Some of these schools give very little mathematics, which, with the lack of science, leaves the student no definite basis for his thinking.

I grant there is a legitimate need for large numbers of men who are skilled in mechanical trades and practical agriculture. Our schools are not doing justice to their students when they do not aid in preparing boys for such work. The danger I see and the objection I make is that we must give the student the opportunity to make his choice. If the pupil is misled, his life may become a failure and a drudgery and the state loses a good citizen. As I view the matter, no school should build up a curriculum with courses so narrow and so technical that a shift cannot easily be made from one course to another. No high school course should be so similar to the training of an apprentice in a workshop that the doors of a college will never open to one who has completed it. Only by flexibility in education can society remain flexible. We must maintain close contact between colleges and all the courses given in the high schools. We must oppose segregation, and this applies especially to fads in our high schools which far too often tend away from directions of advancement and break down the unity of our educational system. Co-ordination in our schools and colleges will maintain democracy and individual development. Too many fads in education produce bungling students and aimless men, and therefore prevent rational development.

The armies of Napoleon were so long unconquerable for the reason that every man carried a "marshal's baton" in his knapsack. The system was so flexible that every man was made to feel he had an opportunity for promotion in the cause he loved. So let us keep the doors of every avenue of education wide open. Give all a choice and an opportunity. Let every road of our educational system be so tied up with the economic interests of our country that progress will not be hindered. Let our whole educational and economic fabric be correlated from grammar school to high school and from high school to college and the industries and professions.

The educational system of Europe has many excellent things to teach us, but its shortcomings the war has made apparent. This also is true of America. If sacrifice we must, let us sacrifice for the interests of democracy rather than of efficiency. The aim of

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education is, after all, to produce men, not merely mechanics. A few exceptional men may be worth infinitely more than hundreds of mediocre men, but the soundness of a nation depends largely on how much the mediocre man thinks, and how true he thinks. He must be enabled to think well and to judge what the men higher up think. When the masses are able to think they are not so apt to be misled by dangerous men. Shall we educate the masses that they may be easily driven like dumb beasts? Or shall we give them a less specialized education but an education that makes liberal, true-thinking men?

Now, after the war, the American farmer may urge purely agricultural schools in the country and desire his son to obtain a knowledge of the art of agriculture at the sacrifice of so-called pure science and the liberal arts. Some men may also desire that boys of twelve to fifteen be sent to agricultural schools to be trained as farm laborers, that the gap left by the men who have died at the front may be filled. We need trained men in agriculture, men who know something about the fundamental sciences underlying agriculture and who can do valiant service in the fields? How then shall the American farmer train his son? How shall the workingman in a rural neighborhood train his son? I was at one time interested in live stock and visited some famous Scotch herdsmen. These herdsmen are famous the world over and know their work thoroughly, for the art has been handed down from one generation to another. Few of them as boys had any choice in life,-I refer especially to the men I met,-they were forced into the work from childhood, before the world dawned for them. Many of them, knowing nothing else, were contented with their work. Their sons began to learn the art as soon as they left the cradle, and at the age of 14 were masters of their profession. In spite of their efficiency, I could not prevent myself from feeling sad when I compared these lifeless and confined minds with those of our American boys. These boys knew nothing of books or of the finer thoughts of men. Science had never opened their eyes to any of her secrets but that of nursing cattle. They lacked creativeness and wideness of interest. They

✰ had specialized too early in life. Does the American farmer and laborer desire that type of education?

The son of the American farmer may desire to become a physician or a lawyer or a scientist. So also may the son of the laboring man desire. Let us give each his opportunity and desire, so far as we are able. Let us think of life not only on the basis of efficiency but of living. The slave system of the South was perhaps more efficient than the present system, but who would advocate slavery. We must teach men to dream, to see beauty, to find work which they enjoy, or life becomes a monotonous expanse which drunkenness and vice alleviate. The sordidness of unkempt country towns and rude country huts strikes despair in the heart of one who thinks and sees and loves beauty. Our education is responsible for some of this. A little education of the child, outside of teaching him the three R's and his occupation, would have raised millions out of their apathy and despair. It is our lack of idealism, our adherence to training that relegates all things not pertaining to the conquest of dollars as of no value, which is responsible for so many failures. Men whose lives are unthinking and slavish, and who can only labor as dumb, driven cattle contribute very little to the upbuilding of civilization. All things are based on ideals and all success and striving are founded on the desire to attain the ideal. Education that neglects the creation of ideals in the youth is a failure, for the man so produced lacks conception and does not contribute his proper portion to the progress of the race.

Let us give the country boy training in agriculture, by all means, but not to the exclusion of other things. Neither should we make his course so narrow, or teach applied science so loosely as if it were unrelated to the great body of science that he has no definite scientific foundation. The courses should be broad enough, so that at their completion any of our colleges or universities will accept the graduates. We must take time to teach the students the liberal arts and the sciences. A collection of facts may soon slip away, but accurate reasoning processes are permanently fixed. If we establish military training in the schools, let us hope