issed. That sort of success means strength;
for strength of mind is nothing more than the ability to "hew to the
line," to follow a given course of effort to a successful conclusion, no
matter how long and how tedious be the road that one must travel, no
matter how disagreeable are the tasks involved, no matter how tempting
are the insidious siren songs of momentary fancy.

What teachers need--what all workers need--is to be inspired with those
ideals and prejudices that will enable them to work steadfastly and
unremittingly toward the attainment of a stated end. What inspired Rowan
with those ideals of efficiency that enabled him to carry his message
and bring back the answer, I do not know, but if he was a soldier, I do
not hesitate to hazard an opinion. Our regular army stands as the
clearest type of efficient service which is available for our study and
emulation. The work of Colonel Goethals on the Panama Canal bids fair to
be the finest fruit of the training that we give to the officers of our
army. If we wish to learn the fundamental virtues of that training, it
is not sufficient to study the curriculum of the Military Academy.
Technical knowledge and skill are essential to such results, but they
are not the prime essentials. If you wish to know what the prime
essentials are, let me refer you to a series of papers, entitled _The
Spirit of Old West Point_, which ran through a recent volume of the
_Atlantic Monthly_ and which has since been published in book form.
They constitute, to my mind, one of the most important educational
documents of the present decade. The army service is efficient because
it is inspired with effective ideals of service,--ideals in which every
other desire and ambition is totally and completely subordinated to the
ideal of duty. To those who maintain that close organization and
definite prescription kill initiative and curtail efficiency, the record
of West Point and the army service should be a silencing argument.

And yet education is more important than war; more important, even, than
the building of the Panama Canal. We believe, and rightly, that no
training is too good for our military and naval officers; that no
discipline which will produce the appropriate habits and ideals and
prejudices is too strenuous; that no individual sacrifice of comfort or
ease is too costly. Equal or even commensurable efficiency in education
can come only through a like process. From the times of the anc