Boston boy who had been graduated from Dartmouth and had opened a law office in Boston. as it did to many other English and American readers. Of his efforts to learn something about the German universities, then the most celebrated in Europe (R. 359), and to study the German language, he wrote:

The first intimation I ever had on the subject was from Mme. de Staël's work on Germany, then just published. My next came from a pamphlet, published by Villers, to defend the University of Göttingen from the ill intentions of Jerome Bonaparte, the King of Westphalia, in which he gave a sketch of the university and its courses of study. My astonishment at these revelations was increased by an account of its library, given by an Englishman who had been at Göttingen, to my friend, the Rev. Samuel C. Thacher. I was sure that I should like to study at such a university, but it was in vain that I endeavored to get further knowledge upon the subject. I would gladly have prepared for it by learning the language I should have to use there, but there was no one in Boston who could teach me.

At Jamaica Plain there was a Dr. Brosius, a native of Strasburg, who gave me instruction in mathematics. He was willing to do what he could for me in German, but he warned me that his pronunciation was very bad, as was that of all Alsace, which had become a part of France. Nor was it possible to get books. I borrowed Meidinger's Grammar, French and German, from my friend Mr. Everett, and sent to New Hampshire, where I knew there was a German dictionary, and procured it. I also obtained a copy of Goethe's Werther in German (through Mr. William S. Shaw's connivance) from among Mr. J. Q. Adams's books, deposited by him on going to Europe in the Athenæum, under Mr. Shaw's care, but without giving him permission to lend them. I got so far as to write a translation of Werther, but no further.

340. The Struggle for National Realization

(Monroe, Paul, Introduction to "Teachers College Syllabi, No. 9," on Democracy and Nationalism in Education. New York, 1919. Reproduced by permission)

In an Introduction to a brief syllabus of lectures by Professor Reisner, as given above, Professor Monroe has given such an excellent statement of the struggle for nationality which has characterized modern history, and the use by nations of education as a tool to that end, that permission has been secured to reproduce the Introduction in full, which is done in the following Reading.

The growth of nations has been the conspicuous political feature of modern times, and the problems of the relation of education to this development have become obvious during the nineteenth century.

The earliest stage of political development occurred with the fixing of tribal groups in a definite habitat The earliest form of this was the city state with its environing dependencies. These early states looked upon all other groups as hostile and unworthy of existence, except as they became subordinated. This incorporation was usually accomplished by force, which process tended to destroy the distinctive cultural features_of_the_minor groups. In other words, the groups expanding by military power led by dynastic ability and ambition looked upon political organization as all-inclusive With the Roman Empire this tendency became substantially a reality. With the Christianization of the Roman Empire the ecclesiastical ideal and pretension paralleled the political one and both became coterminous with civilization. This belief in the universal scope of political organization constituted in form the world's political theory long after the actual conditions were changed. The Holy Roman Empire which expressed this theory in the early modern period was only destroyed by Napoleon in 1804 The chief force in rendering this organization a mere form was that of growing nationalism

From very early days certain groups, especially the English, had grown up in isolation. Over these the Holy Roman Empire had possessed only the most nebulous authority. From the twelfth to the sixteenth century both the English and the French groups, and to a less extent the German and Italian, through internal conflict, developed a local consciousness which more and more gave a distinctive character to each group. The original tribal groups which had entered into the composition of these dawning national groups were marked by distinct racial characteristics. Through internal conflicts, through migration, through conquest and the merging of conqueror and conquered, in time these developing national groups came to represent the accomplished amalgamation of many tribal or racial strains. In fact, the strongest of these early nationalities, the English and French, represented the fusion of most diverse elements.

Thus early became distinct the three great factors determining modern nationalities, namely, blood relationship or race, habitat or geographical environment, and culture. Culture in this sense means common ideals, common traditions, habits and aspirations. A number of other specific characteristics are often urged as essential to nationality, such as common language, common religion, common laws, but there is no one characteristic except that of a common culture which may be posited but what exceptions may be found. The one most commonly given, that of race, cannot be accepted, for every European nation represents a great mixture, and the United States has become the greatest mixture of all. Nor, on the other hand, can such great admixture of racial groups be made an essential, for there are illustrations of the opposite as in the case of Japan. A compact habitat is a usual

characteristic, but there are exceptions as in the case of Greece, now struggling for national realization, or that of the British Empire. It cannot be maintained that common language is an essential, for there is the case of Switzerland with its three languages. Common religion, for a period believed to be essential, was responsible for the many wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but strong national states have developed in spite of internal differences of religious belief. Common laws cannot be held as essential, for federal states are based on the recognition of a diversity of laws.

Modern history since the fifteenth century has been essentially the story of the struggle for national realization. This long struggle has brought a growing recognition that a common culture, that composite of common habits, ideals and purposes, is the one essential characteristic of nationality. Most modern wars, especially of Europe, have been caused by the violation of this principle. This was particularly true during the nineteenth century, because most international settlements, particularly those made by the Congress of Vienna in 1816 and by the Congress of Berlin in 1878, resulted in gross violations of that principle, in favor of other principles usually based on arbitrary force. In a very true sense, then, the great war is but a readjustment of the evils produced by the imperfect and unjust settlements made at the close of the Napoleonic struggle.

From the late eighteenth century the element of common culture has become the dominating one in the conception of nationality. This has resulted in the recognition of two fundamental and correlated truths: First, common culture is a trait which transcends social, religious, and economic distinctions, and its recognition transfers the seat of national existencc from dynasties or bureaucratic legal institutions supported by military force to the masses of the people. Second, the discovery was made that common culture was an artificial product and could be manufactured. The process of this manufacture is by education. From one point of view then the nineteenth century is the period of national development, working towards the democratic interpretation of the problem of nationality and using education as a means.

The first people consciously to apply this method of education to the determination of nationality was the German. Beginning near the middle of the eighteenth century, or even earlier, with special groups, and after 1809 very definitely for the whole group, this people before the Napoleonic wars organized into more than one hundred independent nations has gradually amalgamated into one. The limitation to this development of a German nation as we see it now is that the Germans retained along with this democratic conception of nationality the old dynastic and predatory one. The latter has now been eliminated, in part at least, and it remains to be seen what the former may accomplish.

Other European nations, more favorably situated in regard to other factors in nationality, or relying more upon the older interpretations of national strength, recognized more tardily the importance of education as a means of developing national unity and power. Even the United States has depended more on geographical environment, racial selection, political institutions and common language than upon consciously developed cultural unity. While in the early national period the importance of education to the successful workings and perpetuation of free institutions was commonly recognized, yet a wholly individualistic interpretation of education was practised.

Practically all modern nations are now awake to the fact that education is the most potent means in the development of the essentials of nationality. Education is the means by which peoples of retarded cultures may be brought rapidly to the common level. Education is the means by which small or weak nations may become so strong through their cultural strength and achievements that their place in the political world may be made secure. Education is the means by which nations, strong in the strength of the past, may go through the perilous transition to the modern world, as has Japan and as will Russia. Education is the only means by which the world can be "made safe" for the national type of organization.

Thus the history of nationality during the nineteenth century is closely bound up with the problems of education. And, on the other hand, the education of the present may find an interpretation of all of its problems, whether of purpose, of subject-matter, of organization, or even of method in terms of nationality.

341. The French Teacher and the National Spirit

(Buisson, Ferdinand, "The Schoolmaster as a Pioneer of Democracy"; in Manuel général, September 28, 1909. Reproduced by permission from Buisson and Farrington's French Educational Ideals of Today. World Book Company, Yonkers, 1919)

The following address to the teachers of France, printed in the principal educational journal of France, in 1909, by its Editor at that time a member of and chairman of the Committee on Education of the French Chamber of Deputies is so expressive of the French use of education for national ends, and likewise so expressive of the French educational spirit, that a good portion of the address is here reproduced.

In the eyes of the world, France is attempting what some one has called an "unheard-of experiment." She has pledged herself to establish a new social order founded upon reason and justice. She has claimed the rights of man, enunciated the principal of universal liberty,

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and suppressed all caste privileges. Since escaping as if by a miracle from all forms of reaction and starting again on her march with the Third Republic, she is building up step by step the new type of society that she conceived a society in which each individual will not only encounter no obstacle but will be sure to receive the support of society in the free and complete development of his personality.

Wishing to realize this ideal, the Republic needed to interest the entire nation. In a democracy nothing is done unless the people wish it, and then only to the extent that the people wish.

The Republic found a man in each village who was very close to the people, one possessing the confidence of the citizens, and enjoying a situation at once modest and independent, whose profession removed him. from petty local quarrels, but left him capable of exerting an incalculable influence, through the children upon the family, and through the family upon the district. It was natural, it was inevitable, that the Republic in its propaganda should have made of the schoolmaster its first national agent, the sower of republican ideas.

Thus the schoolmaster's social rôle evolved, not a product of faint ambition, nor of vain presumption, but of the very force of circumstances.

To the sons of working men and peasants whose education the Republic confides to them, they are bound to give a course in civic instruction which will enable these children to live in the twentieth century and not in the eighteenth, in a democratic republic and no longer under a king or an emperor. They are bound to teach their pupils that the Republic wishes all men to "be born and to remain free and in rights equal"; that it will be neither a blameworthy nor a chimerical hope on their part to desire to see this ideal realized; that this realization depends in great measure upon themselves; that the political, economic, and intellectual emancipation of the workers will be the act of the workers themselves; that it suffices for them to agree, to organize, to teach themselves to apply the perfectly legal means of political action which universal suffrage offers them, the syndicate and economic coöperation; that to this end there is need of having recourse neither to rioting, nor to dynamite, nor to sabotage, nor to any form of violence; and finally that the lesson of these last years, not only in France, but in Belgium, Germany, and England, proves that through association the proletariat can become a power, capable of treating with other powers