t at least as
regards the obviousness of the need) is to give all children a vivid
sense of country as physical object, and a deep aesthetic appreciation
of this object--although of course this idea of physical country
cannot be detached from everything else. Each country has its
different problem. Ours is to create a total country, in the
imagination of the young. A German writer not long ago predicted that
the future of America lay in the direction of breaking up into a
little England, a little Ireland, and a little of the other
nationalities here represented. That particular danger may seem remote
enough, but in another way we do continue to be lacking in unity. Our
patriotism has been too local, and America, even after the great war,
is to some extent still a collection of geographical regions. New
England, the South, the Coast are more real to many than country as a
whole. Our great distances, and the impossibility of clearly imagining
them have necessarily presented obstacles thus far to a unified image
of country. The time may come, and perhaps soon, when such a divided
consciousness of country will be a grave flaw in our national life.

It must be a serious function of some kind of geography to give
reality to the idea of country, although of course we cannot separate
entirely geographical from historical idea of country. The teaching of
the geography of the native land must be different from other
geography. Native land must have a warmth and home feeling about it
that other countries do not have, but as yet the psychological
conditions for this have apparently not been worked out. With our
present facilities in pictorial art, the geographical element in the
idea of country seems controllable. The minds of children are
exceedingly impressionable in this direction. Intensity of feeling and
vividness of imagination are at the disposal of the educator. The love
of color, especially, must be used to make lasting impressions upon
the mind. We need to notice also that the idea of physical country
that enters most into patriotic feeling is not an idea of city streets
but of the open country. It is the country that inspires the strongest
home feeling, and it is the country that is the basis of the sense of
changelessness and eternity of native land, that is a strong element
in patriotic sentiment. This element of patriotism, it is plain, is
something aesthetic. It is not so much a moral loyalty to country that
is insp