ife.

All nation-wide affiliations of children which in any way
cross-section classes or antagonistic interests of any kind tend to
create materials out of which patriotic sentiment is made. The school
itself has tended to produce social unity, but it has also tended to
level downward, and also to mediate associations which do not touch
upon the activities and interests and differences of society. Our
schools are democratic by default of social interest in them, so to
speak. We need organizations that shall level upward and to a greater
extent involve the home. Then we shall see how democratic and how
unified our social life really is. These organizations must be both
democratic and practical. They must engage the interests of all
classes. We know little as yet about the potential power, both for
practical accomplishment and for the building of a higher type of
loyalty and patriotism, there may be in wide organization. Here we can
best combine the initiative and spirit that usually come from the
upper classes with the great powers of achieving aggregate results
inherent in the people as a whole. If we are to have a nation which
shall be a unit, the people as a whole must have practical interests
that require daily exertion and attention. They must be not merely
united in spirit as a people, but united in common tasks that are
definite and real. Devotion to the functions of the people is loyalty
to the nation. This we should say is but an elaboration of the old
colonial spirit of cooeperation, when merely living in a community
meant a certain daily service to all the community. We must continue
to do now more consciously and with more technique, so to speak, what
was once done more spontaneously and in a more primitive way. It is
thus that the idea of neighbor might extend throughout the country as
a whole. All the materials are at hand for an unlimited development of
the practical life. _The sense of solidarity and the comradeship and
helpfulness that grow naturally in a small community, where conditions
are hard and dangers imminent, we must still maintain in a great
nation by organization._ This is at heart an educational problem. It
is a work of national character building. It is training in
patriotism.

In this, as in all other phases of education now, we must consider how
the great energies hidden in the aesthetic experiences can be put to
use. The aesthetic, especially in its dramatic form, is a power to be
rec