tutions, has been charged, we know,
with having contributed its share to the causes of the war. The
Prussian school system, we have been told, was mainly a school of war;
all the emotions and ideas necessary to produce morbid nationalism,
distorted views of history, and a belief in and a love of war were
there fostered and deliberately cultivated. There is, of course, some
truth in this; it is a truth that is deceiving, however, if we regard
it as at all indicating the true relation between education and
practical affairs. If the school was a factor in the late war, such a
creative effect of education appears to be rare in history. In general
it is the negative effect of the school that is most conspicuous. It
is what the school has not done to prevent war, what it has failed to
do in not bringing nations out of their perverted nationalism into a
life of more practical relationship with one another that really best
characterizes the school.

It is difficult or impossible for us now, of course, to perceive what
the war has done--in what way, all in all, the future will be
different from the past. It is very easy and natural to look at
everything dramatically now, see revolution everywhere and believe
that all institutions are now to be radically changed. Or, going to
the other extreme, we may become cynical, and say that, human nature
being unchangeable, we shall soon settle down into the old routine and
we shall see presently that nothing revolutionizing has transpired.
Some will say, and indeed are saying that education must now be
entirely remodeled; some will think that education had best go on as
before--that nothing has happened certainly to require any new
philosophy of the school, or any profound change in its form. We see
these two tendencies in many phases of our present situation: in
politics, in education, and in the business world.

It is impossible, we may repeat, to make wholly safe judgments now
about the future, but still something must in the meantime be done. We
must either stand still or go forward--or backward; we must act either
with a theory or without one. The school is involved in this
necessity. There is a new content of history that we cannot ignore,
but must in some way _teach_. We must say something about the war;
current events can hardly be kept out of the school, and to understand
current events there must be a wider content of history than we have
had in the past. There are new, or at l