really nothing less than that of educating and forming national
character. Now that we stand less alone as a nation our character
cannot safely be left so much to chance and to the effects of our
favorable environment and our original stock of virtues. We cannot
continue to be so naive and so unconscious of our country as we have
been. What we are and what we must do as a people, we say, ought to be
better understood. We should bring these ideals of ours out of the
mists of partisan thinking and give them more definite shape, and at
the same time translate them into the language of sincere living.
National honor ought to be made a clearer idea. We ought at least to
be sure it contains the idea of honesty. Such prejudices as our
history has encouraged in us must be recognized, and computed in our
personal equation. These prejudices we certainly harbor--in regard to
our own particular type of government, our culture and education, our
freedom and our democracy and our security. Every nation appears to
have its own idols, its concealments and its self-deceptions, its
belief in its own supremacy and divine mission, and its innocent
faith in its own mores. To overcome such narrowness and perversion
without introducing worse faults is a difficult problem of education.
In either direction there appear to be real dangers. A nation steeped
in provincial ways, plunged as we are now into the midst of world
politics, has difficulties lying before it compared to which
contributing a decisive military power is small. There are dangers in
standing aloof from other peoples. But if we surrender too readily our
prejudices and homespun ways, and too rapidly absorb influences from
without, we shall be no safer, for carried too far, that would mean to
lose our mission and our vision. There appears to be, moreover, no
safe and easy middle course which we can follow. Our only course seems
to be clearly to understand ourselves, rise above our limitations and
difficulties, turn our faults into virtues, and make ourselves secure
by our own inner worth and power.

Plainly there are difficult problems ahead of the teachers of American
history. They must not inculcate suspicion and fear, but they must not
present our security in a false light. They must not inspire the
war-like spirit and imperialistic ambitions, but they must do nothing
to lessen our seriousness of purpose and enthusiasm for the future.
They must not teach national vanity, but the