completeness with which the program of preparation was put through served in some measure to mitigate the evils and reduce the perils that unpreparedness clearly involved. At the door of whatever persons, parties, policies, ideals, or traditions our unpreparedness may be laid, the quickness with which the Nation donned its armor must be attributed in large measure to the educational system. It is true that one half of the recruits in the National Army had had not more than six years of schooling; but, even so, this record left us no worse off than our associates in the war; while, of the other half, the proportion that had reached the advanced work of the high school and the college was far larger than in any other country. Men of the educational attainments necessary in the commissioned personnel were at hand in such numbers that a careful selection could be made. The supply of potential leadership was abundant.

It was at this point that the American high school especially justified its existence. It is well to remember the illiterates, the limited literates, the physical defectives, and the un-Americanized immigrants; we should keep them in mind at least until educational conditions have been improved to the point where the handicaps that they represent shall have disappeared; but it would be most unfortunate to be blind to the real achievements of our educational system, and among these the record of the high schools is the one in which we may glory

the most. The American high school is our single in- digenous educational institution. Its growth during the past thirty years had been so remarkable - a tenfold increase in enrollment during a period in which the general population has increased only twofold that in 1913-14 we had in these schools almost as many pupils as were enrolled in schools of similar grade in all other countries combined. We had, in other words, approximated universal secondary education far more closely than had any other nation; we had carried to a relatively high instructional level a larger proportion of our boys and girls; and we had in consequence a more extensive basis of trained and informed intelligence among the young men who were called to the colors. Because of their attainments, these young men could adapt themselves quickly to the military situation, and they were sufficiently numerous to "leaven the lump." In 1914, Bethmann-Hollweg, in setting forth the factors that in his judgment comprised the strength of Germany, concluded with the statement that the German continuation schools 1 had been steadily at work for a decade. In 1917, an American, in making a similar

1 The "continuation" school in pre-war Germany was an institution designed to supplement the education of the masses by providing parttime instruction after boys and girls had left the elementary school and entered productive employment. Like all other phases of mass education in Germany, it aimed to develop a narrow but efficient proletariat, a body of skilled workers who would be cheerfully subservient to the will of the ruling classes.

inventory of the factors determining the strength of his Nation, might well have set in a position of the first rank the fact that the American high school had been steadily at work for three decades.

CHAPTER XIV

CURRENT PROPOSALS IN CONGRESS

SUCH interest in proposed educational legislation as was outlined in Chapter XII and the educational shortcomings that were briefly described in Chapter XIII, are naturally paralleled by proposals in Congress.

The long-continued interest of the National Education Association in expanding the Bureau of Education has frequently found expression in projected legislation. For several years past, Senator Owen, of Oklahoma, has fathered a measure looking to this end. In the Sixtysixth Congress, the Owen Educational Bill is known as S 819. It is a very brief bill creating an executive department of government to be known as the Department of Education. A Secretary of Education is provided for, and the Bureau of Education, now in the Department of the Interior, is transferred to the new department. Beyond this, the bill merely provides :

"that it shall be the province and duty of said Department of Education to collect, classify, and disseminate information and advice on all phases of education and through coöperation with State, county, district, and municipal education officers to promote, foster, and develop advancement and improvement in the public school system throughout the United States."

This bill might, with propriety, have been introduced at any time within the past twenty-five years. This is another way of saying that it does not adequately meet the situation which the war has revealed. Just what it omits will be shown later in the consideration of other bills.

The military draft, as we have seen, drew public attention to the high per cent of illiteracy both in the native-born population and in a large section of the immigrant population. In the latter, too, the need of more adequate measures for Americanization was clearly revealed. Under the present organization of the Federal Government, both illiteracy and alienism come properly within the purview of the Department of the Interior. Out of the Department of the Interior, as might be expected, there has come a program for the reduction of illiteracy and for the Americanization of foreigners. This program is embodied in the "Lane Bill," introduced at the instance of Secretary Franklin K. Lane by Senator Hoke Smith, of Georgia (as S 17) and Representative William B. Bankhead, of Alabama, (H. R. 1204).

The purpose of the bill, as expressed in its title, is:

"To promote the education of native illiterates, of persons unable to understand and use the English language, and of other resident persons of foreign birth; to provide for coöperation with the States in the education of such persons in the English language, the fundamental principles of government and citizenship, the elements of knowledge pertaining to self-support and home making,