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Show i Education That Would Count. Forty years ago Etmerson said: "This country coun-try is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, "and you must educate them to keep them from our throats." In the same article of university education he said: "We are shut up In schools and colleges and recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a tiling. We cannot use our hands, or our logs, or our arms. We do not know an edible root In the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of tho day by the sun." Putting tho two paragraphs together, we seem to get at what he held to be an education. Perhaps one more sentence from the same essay to help us to a right conclusion. It is this: "We do not believe that any education, any system sys-tem of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind." Further on he gives his idea of who should purnue the study of Latin and Greek. Those In the country who are Romans should study Latin; those who are Greeks should study Greek," by which he doubtless meant that those who learn languages easily should study them. Hut his real meaning of how to guard the pi ate to keep the uneducated millions "from our throats" was, that every young man and women, upon going out into the world, should have eomt, accomplishment through which an honorable livelihood live-lihood can be earned, for to such an one there will be a selfish desire that order be maintained, that Industry may not be checked. In a llttfe while such an one will have q. direct Interest, in tliqf 'form f property, to khjaje the desire that tho shall be no uphW ..or bad -l.aws to disturb that property. When he wrote the extracts conned" .above, tho colleges and unlversitien olilhg nluch closer to the classics than now, and he was weary .of seeing young men turned out from the colleges annually "with finished educations" and still not prepared to turn their hands to any useful work. Again, It was before the great war when the spectacle was presented of tens and hundreds of thousands of men dying, on the one side for "a cause that they deemed just, on the other that tho nation might live. In his casting up ho ignored patriotism as a vital force; at least we can find no indication in all ho wrote that patriotism is a guide to human judgment and the safest counselor of an earnest mind. But It is clear that his thought was that a censor should stand at the door of every high school and college, and, Intercepting every comer after an oduoatlon, question him as to the bent of his mind. What his brain prompted, what his hands wore prone-to do, what hife ambition was on, and then direct him. To A, "You may enter." To B, "Your place is a machine shop." To C, "Why, when you fell asleep last night you wore dreaming of green fields and fruits and flowers and the kindly oyes of domestic animals. Go to a technical school, learn how to analyze soils, how to graft fruit and roses, and then back to tho farm." And so through tho whole range. But that applies only to our own people. What of the hundreds of thousands who seek our shores annually and who vote a year or two later? What Is going to keep them from the country's throat a little later? Our belief is that all those who come who are young should bo put under discipline and at the same time bo given regular lessons of what our country means, what a citizen's duties are, and tho honor that should rest in the title of an American citizen. And the best place for this training would be the army; that a small salary should every month be put away for them to be given them with their discharge, dis-charge, and that such honorable discharge should entitle them to oltizenship. Some will doubtless say, "But think of the expense!" ex-pense!" Well, think what the expenses of arrests ar-rests and trials, and punishment now are. That .disclpllno and that schooling would make men pf those subjected to It, and they would come out O with badges of honor that ever aftor would make them Americans in truth and living defenders alt their lives of the land and its flag. |