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difficult to describe a good citizen adequately, in positive terms. Our
notions of good citizenship are more or less vague and misty and,
therefore, our concept of civilization is equally so.

Granting, however, that we may finally achieve satisfactory definitions of
citizenship and civilization as applying to our own country, it does not
follow that the same definitions will obtain in other lands. A good
citizen according to the Chinese conception may differ widely from a good
citizen in the United States. Topography, climate, associations,
occupations, traditions, and racial tendencies must all be taken into
account in formulating a definition. Before we can gain a right concept of
good citizenship as a world affair we must make a thoughtful study of
world conditions. In so doing, we may have occasion to modify and correct
some of our own preconceived notions and thus extend the horizon of our
education.

What society is and should be in the world at large; what good citizenship
is and ought to be in the whole world; and what civilization is, should
be, and may be as a world enterprise--these considerations are the
foundation stones upon which we must build the temple of education now in
the process of reconstruction. Otherwise the work will be narrow,
illiberal, spasmodic, and sporadic. It must be possible to arrive at a
common denominator of the concepts of society, citizenship, and
civilization as pertaining to all nations; it must be possible to contrive
a composite of all these concepts to which all nations will subscribe; and
it must be possible to discover some fundamental principles that will
constitute a focal point toward which the thinking of all nations can be
directed. Once this focal point is determined and the thinking of the
world focused upon it, the work of reconstruction has been inaugurated.

But the task is not a simple one by any means; quite the contrary, for it
is world-embracing in its scope. However difficult the task, it is, none
the less, altogether alluring and worthy. It is quite within the range of
possibilities for a book to be written, even a textbook, that would serve
a useful purpose and meet a distinct need in the schools of all lands. At
this point the question of languages obtrudes itself. When people think in
unison a common language is reduced to the plane of a mere convenience,
not a necessity. The buyer and the seller may not speak the same language
but, somehow, they cont