the remainder of the semester. The examination is oral, not
written. The time for examination is divided into three, four, or five
minute periods, according to the number in the class. When a student's
name is called, he comes forward and draws from a box one of the
topics and dilates on it before the class during his allotted time. If
he fails on the first topic he may have another draw, but his grade
will be reduced. A second failure would mean a "flunk," unless the
class marks are very high.

There are three or four real advantages in this form of examination:
(1) It saves the teacher hours of labor in reading examination papers;
(2) the teacher, in selecting the topics, omits the unimportant and
chooses only the salient, leading subjects such as every student
should master and remember; (3) the student, knowing that no new
questions will be sprung for the examination, will be almost sure to
be prepared on every question. Failures under this system have been
much less frequent than under the old system of written examinations;
(4) it practically eliminates all chance of cheating in examination.

HENRY W. ELSON
_Thiel College_

B. MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY

=History to be taught as an evolutionary process=

Teaching European history in colleges is, in many ways, not different
from teaching any other history. In each instance it is to be
remembered that history includes all activities of man and not merely
his political life, that facts and data are not intrinsically valuable
but are merely a means to an end, that the end of history is to inform
us where man came from, what experiences he passed through, and
_chiefly_, what were the fundamental forces behind his experiences.
The emphasis should be put on the stimuli--economic, political,
religious, or social--that lead man to act, instead of narrating his
action. In a word, not _what_ happened or _when_ it happened, but
_why_ it happened, is of importance in college history. Stressing the
stimuli in history will almost inevitably lead to treating history as
a continuous or evolutionary process, which of itself greatly
increases the interest of the subject.

=Because history is an evolution it must explain the present=

It is highly desirable that in teaching modern history very much more
time be given to recent history than has generally been the case.
Frederick William I showed that he accepted this when he in