subduing the soil and the forest and in overcoming the various obstacles incident to industrial work, give exercise and scope to every human faculty. They fill the time and employ the energy of men in a most desirable way. When, however, wealth and ease are acquired, grave dangers creep in. The situation is well described in the old Scotch proverb:"War brings poverty. Poverty brings peace. Peace brings prosperity. Prosperity brings pride and pride brings war again."

If we explore an area of country, we may find extensive plains of sand, which were quietly deposited through long ages in the bottom of some prehistoric sea. Other areas represent the slow, annual deposits of rivers. In other places, we may find rock formations, crumpled by titanic forces, violently fractured and elevated into mountains, while near by, there may be evidences of volcanic action, which have swallowed up cultivated fields and destroyed whole villages. The relentless power of the glacial ice-sheet ground up and destroyed the earlier landscape to make the fertile soil and also produced all our beautiful lakes and waterfalls. Whole continents were sunk to make new seas and sea bottoms were raised in air to make new continents.

Much as we may stand in awe of these terrible forces of nature, we must recognize that they were all necessary in the process of world building. Were it not for the earthquakes and upheavals, we should have no mountains, with their majestic forms, their inspiring outlooks and their precious ores ready for the service of

man.

Character building is the most important thing in the world; it is the great end of humanity. It is an active process and like the moulding of this earth, on which we dwell, requires forces of many different kinds—the quiet, slow accretion-the peril-the upheaval-the annealing fire. Terrible as are some of these forces, the process would not be complete without them.

As we view this tremendous march of human development, in which "He putteth down one and setteth up another," we are beholding the most stupendous spectacle of all the ages. Let us then restrain any impatient or rebellious spirit that may arise within us and let us accept war as we accept any other part of the discipline of life-not chosen by us, but ordered for us. Thus only. can we rightly judge its significance and receive its lessons.

of Foreign Languages in High Schools

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By W. A. SUTHERLAND, UNIVERSITY, VA.

HERE are no subjects studied in our schools today that consume more of the student's time than foreign languages. There are evidently two main reasons for the study of other languages than our own. First, the mental training derived from such study, for there is no doubt that it is excellent drill for the mind and that it possesses advantages peculiar to itself. A man's education is not apt to be complete unless he has had some of the discipline which it affords. Now the other, and what seems to me the more important reason for the study of foreign languages, is the intrinsic worth of the language itself. While we find it hardly possible to agree with the old saying that "a man is as many times a man as he has languages", still there is no doubt but that the power to read and speak other languages than our own has a very broadening influence upon us and helps us very materially to better understand and use our own language, besides introducing us into literatures which might otherwise be barred against While the study of languages and especially the dead ones as they are usually taken up in our high schools has as its main purpose the development of the mind rather than the imparting of a sufficient knowledge for the student ever to become able to read the literature of the language, still no one could deny that it would be most fortunate if the student could acquire a good reading knowledge of the language in the time now required for him to secure little more than a smattering of it. It seems to be generally agreed that the vocabulary is the most difficult thing that the student must encounter in the acquisition of either a superficial or profound knowledge of any foreign language. I recall that this was by far the greatest difficulty I had to surmount when I first took up Latin and Greek. I saw little connection between the words in these languages and those words which I had been accustomed to use since my infancy. The contention may or may not be true that my memory was more benefited than if this connection had been presented to me. But the contention is equally true that the betterment of my English

us.

was not nearly so great as if I had seen a more direct connection between the classical languages and my mother tongue. Now we are rather surprised to find that although for over nine decades we have had a perfectly simple means at our hands for bringing the student to see this very close connection, all of the authors of beginners' Latin and Greek books as well as of those of the other ancient and modern Aryan languages have failed to take advantage of it. Simple though it is, it is of inestimable value and would certainly decrease to a large degree the difficulties attendant upon the study of any foreign language. The instrument that I say may be used to such advantage is Grimm's law, too well known to all advanced or even intermediate students of language to need repeating here. However, I will burden the reader with one or two simple illustrations to show how uncomplicated the law is and how practical would be its introduction even into the primary study of any of our Aryan languages whatever.* The law says, for example, that every d of the original language becomes t in English and that t becomes th. Therefore when we come to a word like dentis in Latin we have nearly the whole root of the English word before us and it is no trouble at all to remember that it means tooth. Likewise following the rule that an original p becomes f in English, it is very easy to conclude and to remember that podos means foot. And so following another rule for shifting in German we see that German ober and English over are homologous as well as analogous. How simple all this is as compared with memorizing lists of hundreds of words. While the law with all of its modifications may be quite involved, the core, which deals with practically all cases, is exceedingly simple and could be mastered very easily by any child of ten years.

Let us hope that the educators of the country will see the importance of this law in the teaching of language to beginners as well as to advanced university students. For by making use of it, it may be that the coming generation of students will be able to learn almost two languages in the same time required by their fathers to learn one.

*The consonants to which Grimm's Law applies are practically always the same in Latin and Greek, etc., as in the original language. The variations are negligible.

Commercial Education

BY E. NEWTON SMITH, WEST SOMERVILLE, MASS.

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HE people of the United States are so dependent upon their domestic commerce for local prosperity, and their national supremacy depends so largely upon foreign commerce, that we must train our young people to qualify for this important service in their home localities, in their nation and in the countries beyond the seas.

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During the past century we, as a nation, have enjoyed industrial supremacy among the world powers. though it may not yet be recognized, we are establishing new and vastly larger relationships with the civilized world, and our future financial and commercial opportunities are simply staggering in immensity.

Throughout the civilized world, and this country in particular, the people are making decided progress in the development of a workable social economy that will be complete and beneficial to all mankind. This economy must of necessity be based upon a scheme of social values carefully analyzed and studied. more or less from a scientific point of view. It will be the aim, then, of education to strive for a realization of these values by training our boys and our girls in quite definite paths of learning with a worth while finish. The work to be done, the methods by which it may be accomplished, the establishment of official authority to conduct such an education, all become the necessary instruments of procedure, and, therefore, must be guided conducively toward the results to be obtained.

Just so long as educators continue to look upon the desired ends of education as so much training in particular forms of skill, or mastery of certain amounts of specific knowledge, progress will not be rapid. But when they proceed to apply terms. of an ascertained scheme of values based upon a scientific social economy in determining their aims, then rapid reorganization of means and methods will undoubtedly take place.

With this end of education in view the false democracy which now demands that all receive uniform treatment could be replaced by the practice of differentiating students according to their interests. Subject matter could be arranged to meet the social needs of the students and such plans of accomplishment made as would fit the individual abilities of the students. At the same time it would be entirely possible to preserve both the democratic and the preferential function of the secondary school.

The present depends, both in stability and the true spirit of democracy, upon specialization and upon efficient development of individual ability. The leading thought and principle cannot be to give all students the same treatment; but to encourage, establish and develop as many specialized lines of training as the community can support. National, if not individual, competition will force such specialization upon us. It is time that the haphazard methods of the past be discontinued so that this waste in our social organization may be superseded by economy, in the training of leaders to meet the greater needs of the country.

It is more than probable that with the deep study education is receiving today, the next two or three decades may witness such re-organization of the secondary schools by modifications and new adaptions of existing subjects, and in part by the development and formulation of new subjects of study and training, perhaps under names not now widely used. Evidently, the most sensible way to effect a re-organization would be to investigate and determine, as far as practicable, the fundamental needs of a community and its individuals, and then by analysis of these needs define the agencies, plans, and extent by which they can reasonably be satisfied through the educational activities in the local schools. Such an analysis might be the work of many years, but with the rapidly increasing knowledge thus gained, it ought to be possible to devise in a large measure a modernized system of educational aims, and establish finally the specific functions which it should be the obligation of the schools to undertake, and which it should be within their means to carry out.

This brings about vocational education which is any type of