ughness, in a country that in no
department of life, except perhaps business, has hitherto been
compelled to value technique. Even the optimist grows pessimistic
sometimes in teaching composition.

And yet in the teaching of English the results are perhaps more
evident than elsewhere in the whole range of college work. It is
wonderful to see what can be accomplished by an enthusiast in the
sport of transmuting brains into words. When the teacher seeks for his
material in the active interests of the student--whether athletics or
engineering or literature or catching trout--when he stirs up the
finer interests, drawing off, as it were, the cream into words, the
results are convincing. Writing is one of the most fascinating, most
engaging of pursuits for the man with a craving to grasp the reality
about him and name it in words. And even for the undergraduate, whose
imagination is just developing, and whose brain protests against
logical thought, it can be made as interesting as it is useful.

The teaching of English composition in this country is a vast industry
in which thousands of workmen are employed and in which a million or
so of young minds are invested. I do not wish to take it too
seriously. There are many accomplishments more important for the
welfare of the race. And yet, if it be true that maturity of intellect
is never attained without that clearness and accuracy of thinking
which can be made to show itself in good writing, then the failure of
the undergraduate to write well is serious, and the struggle to make
him write better worthy of the attention of those who have children to
be educated. I do not think that success in this struggle will come
through the policy of _laissez-faire_. All undergraduates profit by
organized help in their writing; many require it. I do not think that
success will come by a pedantical insistence upon correctness in form
without regard to the sense. Squeezing unwilling words from
indifferent minds may be discipline; it certainly is not teaching. I
think that success will come only to the teacher who is a middleman
between thought and expression, valuing both. When we succeed in
making the bulk of the undergraduates really think; when we can
inspire them with a modicum of that passion for truth in words which
is the moving force of the good writer; when the schools help us and
the outside world demands and supports efficiency in diction; then we
shall carry through the program