ation de
l'Alliance Francaise), 1913.

[91] From _Johns Hopkins University Circular_, No. 151.

[92] It will be noted that throughout the amount offered in Spanish
exceeds that in Italian. This is to be expected in view of the boom in
Spanish studies. Moreover, most colleges now allow two units of
entrance credit in Spanish, and 7 and 8 above, under Harvard, are half
courses. Columbia is, I believe, the only college accepting 2 units of
entrance credit in Italian; but I have not examined the catalogues of
all our colleges.

[93] Publications of the General Education Board, 3, 1916, page 13.

XXII

THE TEACHING OF GERMAN

=Our aim=

The mechanical achievements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
have obliterated geographical distances. The contact between nations,
intermittent in former ages, has become a continuous one. It is no
longer possible to ignore great cultural forces in foreign nations
even temporarily--we may repudiate or appreciate them, as we see fit,
but we should do so in a spirit of fairness and understanding, and not
in ignorance.

This, however, is not possible unless those who are to become leaders
of the people are intimately familiar with those treasure chests of
the nations that contain the true gems of racial spirit more
abundantly than even art or literature, history, law or religion,
stored up in the course of hundreds and thousands of years--the
nations' languages. It is the clear duty of the college to instill,
through the right way of teaching foreign languages, a cosmopolitan
spirit of this character into the growing minds of our young men and
women, after the secondary school has given them the first rudiments
of knowledge and cultural training.

According to one's point of view, there is as much to be said in favor
of the classical as the modern languages. Without doubt, their growing
neglect in our institutions of learning is deeply to be regretted;
however, its causes do not concern us here directly. The study of
modern languages is, relatively speaking, so manifestly in the
ascendency, that a return to the emphasis that was formerly laid upon
Latin and Greek is hardly imaginable. The choice between several
modern languages must very largely be determined by personal
preferences and purposes. So much, however, can safely be said, that
an intelligent reading knowledge of German and French is the least
that should be expected of a college graduate. For, while in t