whom he relegates
to the kingdom of the lost, makes the place singularly attractive to the
lover of good intellectual society.
Nevertheless, the reversion to narrower creeds but indicates the newly
awakened hunger of the religious life. Men who sacrifice live with
graver earnestness than those who are carelessly prosperous. Cynicism
and pessimism are children of idleness and frivolity, never of heroic
sacrifice and nobly accepted pain. These latter foster faith in life
and its infinite and eternal meaning. Thus, with all the tragic
submerging of our spiritual heritage the War involves, we may hope that
it will cause a revival, not of emotional hysteria, but of deepened
faith in the spirit, in the supreme worth of life, until at last we may
see the dawn of the religion of humanity.
XI
THE WAR AND EDUCATION
Equally far-reaching are the changes the War must produce in our
education. Temporarily, our higher institutions will be crippled by the
drawing off of the youth of the land for war. This is one of the
unfortunate sacrifices such a struggle involves. We must see to it that
it is not carried too far. One still hears old men in the South
pathetically say, "I missed my education because of the Civil War." Let
us strive to keep open our educational institutions and continue all our
cultural activities, in spite of the drain and strain of the War. For
never was intellectual guidance and leadership more needed than in the
present crisis.
The paramount effect of the War on education is, however, in the
multiplied demand for efficiency. This is the cry all across the
country to-day, and, in the main, it is just. Our education has been
too academic, too much molded by tradition. It must be more closely
related to life and to the changed conditions of industry and commerce.
Each boy and girl, youth and maiden, must leave the school able to take
hold somewhere and make a significant contribution to the society of
which he or she is an integral part. Vocational training must be
greatly increased. The problems of the school must be increasingly
practical problems, and thought and judgment must be trained to the
solution of those problems. This is all a part of that socialization of
democracy which must be achieved if democracy is to survive in the new
world following the War.
There is, nevertheless, an element of emotional hysteria in the demand
for efficiency and only efficiency. Efficiency is t
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