Chapter IV: Our Colleges and Technical Institutes

It is to be hoped that if we can realize, as England did not, that education, to quote Arnold Bennett, "is the very last thing that we ought to economize in," we shall spare ourselves some of the unnecessary calamities of war. England, France, Italy, and the Central Powers have thrown into battle a very large percentage of their educated and trained men, including most of the young professors and instructors in their universities and colleges, gymnasiums, and _lycées_. Their colleges and universities are almost empty. The young men who would under normal conditions be receiving the education and training necessary to prepare them for leadership in the future development of these countries are fighting and dying in the trenches.

In view of the fact that all of these countries must needs go through a long period of reconstruction, industrial and otherwise, it is a pity that the sacrifice of its best youth had needlessly to be made. As a matter of fact, we see now that no university, college, or technical school that can possibly avoid it should permit its faculty or student body to be scattered or its energies dissipated. All concerned should redouble their energies and concentrate them upon those things which will be of the most service in the progress of the war and will prepare the students for the most effective service when the war is over.

President Wilson, three months after the severing of relations with Germany, in response to a request for an opinion on the continuance of a college or a technical-school education during the war, wrote this letter:

The question which you have brought to my attention is of the
very greatest moment. It would, as you suggest, seriously impair
American prospects of success in this war if the supply of highly
trained men were unnecessarily diminished. There will be need for
a larger number of persons expert in the various fields of applied
science than ever before. Such persons will be needed both during
the war and after its close.

I have therefore no hesitation in urging colleges and technical
schools to endeavor to maintain their courses as far as possible
on the usual basis. There will be many young men from these
institutions who will serve in the armed forces of the country.
Those who fall below the age of selective conscription and who do
not enlist may feel that by pursuing their courses with earnestness
and diligence they also are preparing themselves for valuable
service to the nation.

I would particularly urge upon the young people who are
leaving our high schools that as many of them as can do so avail
themselves this year of the opportunities offered by the colleges
and technical schools, to the end that the country may not lack an
adequate supply of trained men and women.

It must be said that while students were restless and anxious to perform a service, the college authorities themselves adopted a very hopeless and helpless attitude toward the war in so far as it reacted on the internal economy of these institutions. Commencement exercises were abbreviated and shorn of their customary festivities. College presidents and executive committees of alumni associations began to "talk poor" and to wax lugubrious over the small senior class of 1918. These men even wanted to drop athletics, which, to the facetious layman outside, constitutes the main reason for a college's existence. The general action of the colleges in this matter of abandoning so many athletic and other activities drew from President Wilson a letter deprecating such action and advising that the colleges maintain all their usual sports if they did not detract in any way from the military purpose of the nation. In an address at Princeton University, Major General Wood deplored hasty action of students in enlisting for service in the army and navy, urging them to complete their school work for the year, and that they mark time pending the carrying out of provisions of the selective-draft law.

It is clear, on one hand, that many college authorities, especially those of the older type, passed through a state of academic institutional hysteria, while, on the other hand, their student bodies translated the emotions of the moment into a deep conviction by enlisting.

At the same time the spirit of mobilization was present in many a university, college, and technical school. In the cultural college it was the individual who enlisted, as the institution was not of the type whose work directly and definitely counted for important war service. In the universities where courses are given in agriculture, in medicine, in technology, and in practical arts, the institution itself enlisted, in that it offered war-emergency courses.

It is perhaps interesting at this point to see how response came from these two types of institutions. In the first instance it came from individuals in the college, which was no more than could be expected of classical colleges, which have for years laid emphasis on the benefits of individualistic training. In the second instance the vocational colleges, as they are sometimes disparagingly called, responded from the viewpoint of collectivism; that is, the college as a whole, because of its service departments, was able to offer to the state and to the nation a course of training of immediate military value to the country.

But thoughtful people can never again speak disparagingly of any university or technical school. While the movies have been filled with the citizens of our democracy, and the cafés crowded with people to whom war was something apart from existence, and the white-light gayety of the streets has been apparently undimmed, the youth of our colleges--the best youth in the world--have enlisted in Plattsburgs, joined the Naval Reserves, taken up signal-corps work, entered the research laboratory, followed their instructors into the medical corps, joined a school of aëronautics, or donned overalls in the shipyards.

Doctor Finley, Commissioner of Education of the state of New York, in an address delivered before the Illinois chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa, speaks of his visit to Oxford just before the war and of a visit to Cambridge, England, a few weeks after it had begun. At Oxford he found the calm of the cloister, with its memorials of poets, scholars, statesmen, princes, and soldiers, where there were ancient academic conventions that paid no heed to the passing customs of the world outside. Only six weeks later at Cambridge--a Cambridge which had a month or six weeks before been as Oxford--the town was filled with men in khaki. In this charming address Doctor Finley speaks of a portrait of Samuel Butler which he saw at Cambridge,--a portrait of the man who described in his book "Erewhon" a land where criminals were treated as sick, and the sick as criminals; where there were "Colleges of Unreason," colleges in which students were promoted for excellence in vagueness and were plucked for insufficient trust in printed matter, colleges where the principal courses were those in hypothetics, colleges in which mediocrity was fostered, colleges whose graduates almost invariably suffered from atrophy of individual opinions. And Doctor Finley says that as he stood before this portrait, in a hall almost deserted, he thought of those students of courses which Butler had called "hypothetical" and "atrophying," who had gone forth to prove the valor of their cloistered and unpractical learning.

The university which apparently had paid no heed to the passing customs of the world outside had now mobilized herself; and this has been true of the colleges and technical schools of our own country,--truly a mobilization of the spirit of sudden forgetting of self-concerns for a selfless service.

The college of individualism, as has already been suggested, mobilized through its individuals, while the college of service mobilized itself. In the spring of 1917 I happened to be in a Western university. The campus was practically deserted. Instructors in foreign languages had joined the government interpreters' service; some of the professors of science had gone to government research laboratories, while a chosen few were off in some secret place working under government direction in scientific research concerning submarine warfare. The older students had enlisted, and the younger ones were marching in squads on the athletic field. Truly a mobilization, but largely individualistic.

I came East to another college where more than 2000 students were devoting their time to a series of special short courses dealing with the various problems of an educational, social, and practical nature which the war had thrust upon the country. In this way the institution--Teachers College, Columbia University--had mobilized itself. Special arrangements had been made by the college authorities whereby all but a very few students could participate in these emergency courses without seriously deranging their regular courses.

In general, the aim of these emergency courses was not merely to meet those conditions which exist at or near the battle line but to help in the solution of the hundred and one urgent problems which must be solved by that great majority of teachers and social workers whose service will of necessity be given in home communities. Accordingly, courses on social relief were offered, and among others the following topics were considered: "Administration of relief in time of war and emergency," "Care of orphaned and neglected children." Under the organization of rural communities were discussed "Conserving the food supply," "The health problem of the rural community," and "The organization of school pupils for agricultural service." The matter of social service in military camps was thoroughly gone into and reports and lectures were given by men who had actually worked with the soldiers themselves. The Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl movements were also discussed in special courses, and the practical questions of the amateur gardener were carefully considered.

In the School of Practical Arts special attention was given to the making of children's garments, the sewing of Red Cross material, and the renovating of millinery and clothing. In addition to lectures on thrift in food the department of cookery gave a course on emergency cookery for men, which was especially designed for army cooks and Boy Scout leaders. There was also a series of lectures and demonstrations by a government expert on the preservation of food, including canning and drying. Other courses considered the essentials of diet planning and of how to buy in large quantities for camps and hospitals. The departments of chemistry and biology gave special instruction in the analysis of water and of milk, and in the technique of diagnostic bacteriology. The fine-arts department made some rather unique contributions, including a study of protective coloring with reference to _camouflage_ for military purposes, the designing of posters, and topographical sketching. There was a course on tin-can work for home and camp, in which, from discarded tomato cans and powder boxes, were produced all sorts of useful things--coffee pots, camp stoves, hot-water bottles, lanterns, and candlesticks. A special course in photography for hospital and field work was offered. In the modeling class the manipulation of plaster of Paris was demonstrated for nurses and Red Cross students, to be used in connection with occupational work for convalescent soldiers. An extremely interesting series of projects in plastic material was worked up, particularly some clay models of trenches and dugouts.

Another course which attracted some hundred and fifty students was the emergency instruction given by the physics department in automobile mechanics. The object of the instruction was to equip the average student with a stock of general information that would enable him to operate a car, to make minor repairs, and to diagnose trouble intelligently. Some of the matters discussed were the four-cycle engine, carburetion, transmission and differential, and the storage battery. For experiment and demonstration purposes the laboratory was supplied, among other apparatus, with a detachable boat motor and two automobiles. The latter were thoroughly dissected and then reassembled from spark plug to tires, and in every possible way the mechanism was examined and experimented with.

The departments of nursing and health and of physical education offered some ten courses in all, including home nursing and emergencies, surgical dressings, care of children, public-health problems, first aid, medical gymnastics, and invalid occupations.

The department of music offered three courses designed especially to prepare students to lead music appropriate to patriotic meetings and to present selections at hospitals and camps.

Two courses were offered by the department of speech: one planned for those intending to do emergency speaking and lecturing, and the other arranged to meet the demand for entertainment for little children, the sick, and soldiers during the war.

In addition to these technical courses there was a series of lectures on economic problems contributed by various Columbia experts, and another series of special lectures by such speakers as Mr. Joseph McCabe, the noted English author, and Mr. Frederick C. Wolcott, director of the Polish War Relief Commission. Finally, there was a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten address by Ignace Paderewski, in which he reviewed the long and troubled story of his native land and in impassioned words pleaded for the restoration of Poland's ancient liberties.

It may be said without exaggeration that in all some millions of people throughout the United States will, directly and indirectly, profit by this emergency instruction at Teachers College, for the students who attended are for the most part experienced teachers, who, in their turn, will organize and instruct their home communities in similar preparedness courses.

At the same time another university, unique in its way,--the University of the State of New York,--was holding, through its Board of Regents, a meeting to determine academic standards of the schools and colleges of the state in a war crisis. This university was modeled upon the University of France, the constituent units of which have proved themselves wonderful instruments in the waging of war. The universities represented have organized themselves into a civil army, preventing the wastes of duplication, misdirected endeavor, and isolation so common everywhere.

In the building where the Board of Regents met, two conferences were being held, one representing the schools and colleges of the state, the other representing the agricultural and industrial interests. In one place men were discussing how the academic status of professional schools and colleges might be maintained, and in another room men and women were participating in a discussion of public markets, food conservation, services of agricultural teachers, the taking of an agricultural census, the releasing of boys from school, the organizing of canning clubs, and all those affairs of the state and its schools which might contribute to the nation's welfare. These two meetings offered a picture of two lines of work which must always go together in time of war.

As Commissioner Claxton has said:

Students should be made to understand that it is their duty
to give to their country and to the world the best and fullest
possible measure of service, for both country and world will need
more than they will get of that high type of service which only men
and women of the best education and training can give. Patriotism
and desire to serve humanity may require of these young men and
women the exercise of that very high type of self-restraint which
will keep them to their tasks of preparation until the time comes
when they can render service which cannot be rendered by others.

On the other hand, these same colleges and schools must contribute out of themselves that important vocational service so necessary in time of war, and the gathering at this meeting of agricultural and household-arts teachers, of farm-bureau men and county agents, of representatives from granges and women's clubs, of bankers, and of publicists was after all typical of the other half of the university or school contribution.

At this meeting of the Regents the following resolutions were adopted on the recommendation of the administrators of schools and colleges who were in conference with the Regents. These resolutions are given in full because they express significantly the point of view of the 36 colleges and 964 secondary schools in New York State.

1. Realizing that one of the most urgent needs of the country
in the present crisis will be the training of officers for
military service, and that it is the peculiar duty of colleges and
universities to contribute in supplying this need, we recommend
that the several colleges and universities in the state establish
one or more units of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, as
provided in general order No. 49, including courses leading at the
same time to a commission and to a college degree.

2. In order that the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices of
war may be shared in just proportion by all the nation, and that
the calamitous experiences of the past under the voluntary system
may be avoided, it is our judgment that in the raising of the
necessary military forces the principle of universal obligation to
service be applied by a process of selective conscription.

3. That members in good standing of the graduating classes of
the professional schools of the state who shall have been accepted
for military service by the government be granted their degrees
without special examination.

4. That members in good standing of the graduating classes in
the undergraduate departments of the colleges and universities of
the state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and who
shall be accepted for military service by the government should be
granted their degrees without special examination.

5. That members of the graduating classes in the high schools
of the state who would normally be graduated in June, 1917, and
who have been accepted for military service shall be granted their
diplomas, and that the colleges of the state be requested to honor
these diplomas for purposes of admission.

6. That college students in good standing pursuing medical
preparatory courses who enlist or are called into military service
before the completion of the college year be granted certificates
of completion of their year without examination.

7. That absence from college or high school by reason of
enlistment in military service shall not prejudice the award or the
retention of university scholarships.

8. That while the immediate service which women may perform
in connection with the war will be in medicine or nursing and
other work for general public welfare, and that while the greatest
service for which they may eventually be called will be the
supplying of positions vacated by the enlisted men, we recommend
to the United States government the appointment by the Council for
National Defense of a commission which shall outline an appropriate
policy for women students in our colleges, with respect both to
their college studies and to their enlistment for national service.

9. That this board approve the plans of the National Research
Council and proffer our hearty coöperation.

10. That students in colleges and universities of the state who
are liable for military training under the military-training law
be exempt from the training prescribed by the Military Training
Commission if they pursue courses in military training under
approved instruction at their respective institutions.

Further, that as there are numerous resources in both the
elementary and the secondary schools of the state which can be
used to advantage at this time,--among the most important of which
resources are the use of high-school pupils for the farms and for
necessary clerical and other work that can be done by pupils who
remain in school, the use of teachers for summer work, the services
possible through industrial and household-arts departments, and the
enlistment of upper-grade children for home gardens,--the board
adopts the following resolutions:

1. That the State Agricultural Department in conjunction with
the State Education Department formulate a plan for enlisting
and placing high-school boys upon the farms, for directing and
supervising the work of such boys, for determining qualifications
as to age and fitness, for determining compensation and school
credit, and for the adjustment of any other problems connected with
the safeguarding of these boys who enlist for farm service.

2. That the State Education Department secure through the
necessary sources a statement of the needs that might be met
through the industrial and household-arts departments and other
resources of the schools herein stated, and transmit such a
statement to the schools of the state, to the end that these
resources may be used intelligently and through regularly
constituted channels.

3. That the State Education Department consider the
practicability of securing some provision by which during the
summer vacation and at other times of the year boys 12 years of
age or over may be employed if a certificate of proper working
conditions can be furnished.

It is impracticable to outline even briefly all that the various colleges and institutes have contributed to war service. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hardly mentioned in what follows, and yet it is conducting a score of activities of immediate emergency value. Drexel Institute has contributed not only courses but also its president, Doctor Godfrey, who is serving as a member of the National Council of Defense in special charge of war needs as met by education and science.

To name all the institutions which are serving in one way or another is to call the roll of nearly every college and technical institution in the country. To give here a brief account of what a few are doing will show the range of the activities and the nature of the service.

Early in May Columbia University inaugurated a series of emergency courses of a military, naval, and general nature arranged for the purpose of training students who desire to serve the national government in time of war. They were classified as intensive courses and were opened without restriction to all those who desired to be trained in any of the various subjects offered. These courses included military map making, field-service regulations, general telegraphy, radio telegraphy, camp sanitation, map reading and map interpretation, practical navigation, and electrical devices of the navy.

Harvard University has many achievements to her credit, for example: advanced training for selected officers under the leadership of six French officers; a cadet school for ensigns; a naval school for wireless operators; a course in orthopedic surgery; the furnishing of the medical personnel for four base hospital units; and war service by departments of dentistry, medicine, psychology, and foreign languages.

Iowa State College gave a six weeks' course in special military and military-engineering work. Regular two-year noncollegiate courses were offered electrical workers and stationary engineers, mechanical draftsmen and mechanics, structural draftsmen and building superintendents, surveyors and road makers.

At Cornell University all professors and instructors in the marine-engineering department and all the senior students of marine engineering were in either private or public shipyards on or before graduation day.

The University of Wisconsin, anticipating that a large number of persons who had been trained in the administration of stores would soon be needed in the civil section of the Quartermaster's Department, in the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department, and in the Quartermaster's Officers' Reserve Corps, decided to aid in training for these services by offering special courses in the classification and handling of stores for those departments.

This university also planned a summer session with courses in wireless telegraphy, first aid to the injured, Boy Scout movement in theory and practice, and gave a course of war lectures especially designed for teachers, and a course for Red Cross volunteers who wished to take part in civilian relief work. This last course was in coöperation with the Red Cross organization, which, as explained in another chapter, will have much to do with relieving families deprived of their natural heads. The men and women in this course studied the basis of family life, psychological and economic principles underlying bodily health, the resources of the state to preserve the family group, and methods of social service and friendly visiting.

Aviation schools for training candidates for the aviation corps were established at the University of California, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Princeton, and the University of Texas. The first navy aëronautic school has also been established recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The College of the City of New York offered an emergency war course in bookkeeping and office practice to help fit men and women to fill the positions made necessary by the increased work of the national government, and to train people to take the places of those who responded to the call to arms. It also offered its regular winter courses during the summer in order to speed up the graduation of young men already enrolled in the college who might be drafted.

This college also placed in every armory and military headquarters in Greater New York a teacher of conversational French. This work was very popular and highly successful.

The University of Kentucky offered to women and civilians two special courses in its College of Electrical Engineering: a course in automobile engineering especially designed to teach women how to drive and take care of motor ambulances, and a course in wireless telegraphy.

The Pennsylvania State College offered a six weeks' course in storekeeping under the direction of the Quartermaster's Department.

In Massachusetts, through the extension department of the State Board of Education, lessons were given in conversational French in the armories and encampments. In one armory as many as five instructors were engaged in this service. The vocabulary of the soldier being quite unlike the French dictionary, the military terms and expressions actually used were emphasized. Necessary French slang and words used commonly for distances, rations, arms and equipment, money, measures, and military orders were dwelt upon. Spoken French for doctors and nurses who are going to the front has been given in coöperation with the Metropolitan Chapter of the American Red Cross.

A six months' course in wireless telegraphy for women was offered at Hunter College, New York City, the course of training being in three divisions: laboratory work, technical work, and the use of code. This course was given with the expectation not that women wireless operators will be placed on ships of war or on transports, but rather that they will be placed in land stations and on coastwise steamers, thus releasing men for more active service. It is understood that on the mechanical side the work is harder for the women, but that on the code work they are much quicker than men.

The field for service of a college is not necessarily limited to extending the usefulness of its vocational departments to meet the war-emergency demands. As has already been noted, the department of French may give courses in conversational French in armories and in cantonments. Sir Robert Blair writes:

We had this plan in England, and as volunteering grew to very
considerable dimensions towards the close of 1914 and there were
tens of thousands of soldiers grouped within the near neighborhood
of London, an arrangement was made with the war-office authorities
for the teaching of French.

Courses in mathematics applicable to war needs may be given. The college may send tutors to cantonments to give instruction to undergraduates who have not completed their college work and who would like to receive a college diploma. Colleges can coöperate with the Y.M.C.A., to which has been given the privilege of looking after the recreational features in cantonments. American college boys and others will not be satisfied with formal military training. They will want health talks, entertaining and educational lectures, and instruction as to many things helpful in civil as well as in military life.

There is a large opportunity, in a field as yet hardly touched, for departments of psychology in universities to help in selecting men for different branches of war service and to give vocational guidance to men who leave the service unfitted by war work to reënter their former occupations and perhaps untrained to enter a new service. A staff of psychologists is now at work in each of our cantonments applying intelligence ratings.

There are two distinct uses for the ratings which are given the men as a result of the psychological examinations. One of these uses is military and consists in furnishing a commanding officer with the rating of each man in his command, by which he may, if he chooses, be guided in selecting men for promotion, or for special duties requiring more than average intelligence and mental quickness. The other use is medical and is the thing specifically sought--to find men who are so markedly below the average in intelligence as to demand consideration for discharge or for assignment to simple manual work under careful supervision.

The general method of the test is as follows: The men of each company are divided into 4 groups of 75 to 80 each. Each group is first given a simple literacy test which takes about five minutes and shows only which of the men can read and write. The illiterates are withdrawn at this point to be given examinations for manual skill. All those who can read are then given the "group-intelligence examination."

Those who do not get good ratings are now re-examined in a group to discover whether they are merely slow or are of low-grade intelligence. If any fail to make a satisfactory showing, they are grouped with the illiterates who were separated from the rest of the group after the preliminary examination.

All these--illiterates, and literates who have not done well in the group examination--are given tests for manual skill and ingenuity. These tests are such as putting together dissembled mechanisms, etc. After further individual examination those who receive the poorest rating are likely to be considered for discharge or as suited only for manual work under supervision.

Those who display special mental or manual ability are brought to the notice of their company commanders as men who may be given assignments for superior intelligence or skill.

The aims of the entire psychological examination are to measure native intelligence and ability, not schooling; to disclose what a man can do with his head and hands, not what he has learned from books; and to help the medical officers quickly to discover and sift out the extremely incompetent, and thus prevent the inefficiency and injustice resulting from putting men in places which they are not qualified to fill.

Of course there is a tremendous opportunity for the college to help people understand the causes of war. This has already been referred to in the chapter on "War and Community Uses of our Schools."

Colleges having teacher-training departments will have the opportunity of giving short courses to men and women who will take the places of those who have gone to war. There is also a field for great service in discovering ways and means of improving our public-school systems through lessons drawn from the war.

Every college and university has a large library, and this should be examined with a view to discovering its possible contribution to national defense in war time. Aside from their functions of supplying fresh news and judgments of current events, libraries surely have a vital part in that work of organized research which is behind Germany's scientific and industrial efficiency. Successful research rests as much upon adequate and well-organized book resources as upon laboratories and trained men. The plain and immediate duty of a college situated near a cantonment, or having a portion of its student body enlisted in a camp, would seem to be to build up a military library adequate as a center of military information for those who are studying new methods and instruments of attack and defense. Such a library would be a technical library assisting the large number of specialized schools and fields of training for officers and men in every branch of the service and even in different duties in the same branch. Medical libraries of colleges should be available, with new and important material on military hygiene, medicine, sanitation, and surgery, and this material should be given the widest publicity with reference to its usefulness for the military, medical, and hospital corps.

The college library might well lend to a cantonment a member of its library staff for the development of not only a technical library but also a general reading library for those soldiers who desire only general reading.

The geological department of a college can help in deciding on foundation conditions for army-work constructions, on the location of camp sites with reference to topography, drainage, and water supply, and on the location of trenches with reference to dryness, underdrainage, and rock deposits. Such a department can participate in the study of earth vibrations in connection with heavy artillery discharges for the accurate determination of the distances of enemy batteries. It can also help the government in giving more exact training to young men in the interpretation of geological and topographical maps.

It is obvious that the technical college and the technical institute may render the greatest government service through its faculty and student body. Armour Institute of Chicago has a large number of its graduates and older students in concerns which are producing munition supplies and war-ships. Many have entered the signal service, and a large class in marine engineering has been specifically organized to prepare men for service with the government.

Wentworth Institute in Boston, under the direction of Principal Arthur L. Williston, has been giving instruction in various branches of military engineering to the First Regiment of Engineers of the Fifth District, U. S. A. This regiment was originally an infantry regiment, but the men voluntarily elected to train themselves to become an engineering regiment. The commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers and all the enlisted men gave three nights a week to the work for several months. In addition some sixty of the men in the regiment voluntarily resigned from business positions in order to devote eight to ten hours a day, six days in the week, to the work. This institute instilled what Mr. Williston calls "mechanical gumption" into the enlisted men through short unit courses in mapping and surveying, topographical sketching, and map reading; gasoline-engine operation, repairing, and maintenance; portable steam-power plant construction and operation; electrical-power plant operation; field telephony; electric-line construction and maintenance; timber construction, including pontoons, timber trusses, timber suspension-bridge construction, machine-gun shelters, dugouts, and dugout tunneling and framing; strength of materials; concrete construction, including culverts, bridge abutments, gun-carriage and engine foundations; acetylene welding and demolition work; thermite welding and emergency repair; machinery erection and alignment; forging, hardening, and tempering; hydraulics and drainage, especially trench drainage; and rigging. The time was too short to give any elaborate theoretical training. The instruction was given through brief and intensive courses in a very practical way. In many instances it showed men who had practical experience and ability how to adapt their particular kind of skill to the special needs of the given service. Many of these men already had skill, but they needed to have it adapted to military ends.

PREPARE AT
BUFFALO VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS]

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, has been conducting 8 evening classes in machine-shop practice, 6 classes in machine-drafting design, 1 evening class in elementary ship drafting, and day courses for a large body of enlisted men from the navy electrical school and from the signal reserve corps. Those who come from the signal reserve corps are being trained for active service in telegraphy, the institute furnishing the technical instruction in elementary and applied electricity, and army officers furnishing the military and field-service instruction. A mess for the men of this corps is conducted at the school of household science connected with the institute, and here details of men are trained for this work through a course in army cooking. The men from the electrical school are quartered at the navy yard, and spend five and one-half hours a day at the institute taking courses in machine-shop operation, steam-engine practice, elementary electricity, armature- and field-coil repair work on electrical machines, elementary chemistry, and batteries. It is interesting to note that Pratt Institute made a special effort to hold intact its student body of the regular courses, on the theory that the thoroughly trained mechanic or technician in service is many times more valuable to the nation than a private in the ranks. As a result of this effort, very few of the students of the day school dropped from the regular courses.

The William Hood Dunwoody Institute of Minneapolis began immediately on the severance of relations with Germany to serve as a recruiting station for the United States Engineers' Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Quartermaster's Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Civil Service Commission, and the United States Navy.

It also outlined a scheme for taking a census of mechanics and technicians for the state of Minnesota, which is now being carried out, and on the basis of which recruiting will go forward for every branch of the government service.

It made arrangements for bringing to Minneapolis, on the first of August, 425 recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station at Chicago, and distributed them among the following classes in training at the institute: general electricians, radio electricians, carpenter's mates, machine-shop operators, gas-engine operators, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, cooks, and bakers.

The institute is training more than 200 novices in day and evening classes in telegraphy. Of these about 60 per cent are girls and women, this course being offered in response to a direct request from railroad and telegraph lines in the vicinity of Minneapolis. It is also giving some instruction in operating-foremanship work for a prominent local steel and machinery company, as this company has renewed the manufacture of munitions and needs operation foremen. The institute was called upon to select the most promising men and to train them in one process of which they are later to have charge in the shop. Director Charles A. Prosser in making a report to the secretary of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education said:

We have 154 people taking radio work in day and evening
classes. This group is made up of a number of different types.
First, there are the amateurs with licenses who have enlisted in
our first radio company of the United States Signal Service and
have gone into that class to improve their speed. Second, there
are other young men who have gone in to learn the work so as to be
recruited into another radio company of the United States Signal
Corps or into the naval service, and there are, in the third place,
young men who have gone in with the idea of offering their services
to the Marconi Company, either for land work or for duty on board
the merchant ships which are being built.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 mechanics and technicians
have been sent into different branches of the government service
by Dunwoody Institute. This number is made up in part of our own
students from our school--particularly from the evening classes,
although some of our day boys have gone--and in part of mechanics
and technicians throughout Minnesota who have gone into the service
through Dunwoody Institute, where we conduct a recruiting station
and where we are recruiting into the service every Wednesday,
applications being taken in the interim.

We have sent into the service 1 motor-truck company; 2 others
are in process of organization. We are sending out 1 radio company,
which is ready to go, and are about to organize another. We are
also organizing 1 wire company, 1 baking company, and 1 company of
cooks. In addition we have sent men to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and
are sending men to the Puget Sound Navy Yard. We have also put men
in touch with the Civil Service Commission and sent them into the
service in this way.

The response of these and other colleges and technical institutes justifies as nothing else could their past claims that they train not only for the spirit of service but for the life of service.

The effect of the war on the college curriculum cannot be hastily measured. Institutions of collegiate grade are slow to make radical changes in the requirements for the bachelor's degree. Some have already shortened the college course to three years. Others have decided as a war measure that students ought to be through college by the time they reach conscription age. Some are offering opportunity for all-the-year-round work. Others are allowing war service to count toward a college degree. The English universities are already thinking of strengthening their courses in science and laboratory research, of giving more attention to modern languages, and of developing vocational courses.

Certainly in America there will be an immediate and greater demand for so-called "practical" subjects. It may be that one of the effects of the war will be the sharpening of the differentiation and an increase of competition between the idealistic and the practical groups of studies. This will be unfortunate. There should be no sharpening of differences of opinion. They had much better be dulled. There is no real necessity for antagonism between the cultural and the vocational subjects. People only _think_ there is a need for constant justification of the one against the other. Such thinking has become a habit of mind.

The French have a way of saying that the cultural subjects are merely the moral conditions, the ethical history, and a judgment as to the ethical value of the world complex of vocational and economic life; for this reason any conflict between cultural and vocational subjects is impossible, and the more vocational education is developed, the more will the cultural aspects be needed and the more highly developed will they become. The French point out that what we term cultural subjects developed in two civilizations which were very highly practical, vocational, and militaristic; namely, Greece and Rome. They speak of the humanities as being essentially the abiding lessons of those civilizations which in vocational and military efficiency stood much higher above their fellows than Germany stands in those respects above contemporary civilization to-day.

Vocational subjects are direct-service subjects always. By their very nature they respond immediately to an emergency. The cultural subjects are more indirect in their effect. They could not be otherwise. I often wish we could get into the habit of speaking of liberal subjects in the sense in which this term was used in the older days of our colleges, when the term "liberal" implied that the subjects classed under this head were liberalizing; that is, they liberated, or set free, the minds, spirits, and bodies of men and women from prejudice, selfishness, tradition, passion, cruelty, and so on. I have never seen how one could _elect_ culture, for it is always a by-product coming out of thinking and living. To study the language of an ancient people and to learn nothing of their government or ideals is useless. To study this government and these ideals of an older civilization and to see no lessons for the world of to-day is almost valueless. To study the past in terms of problems of human society is liberalizing.

New meanings of the realities of war are before us. New concepts of two great ideals of government confront us. New methods of making war more horrible strike our eyes with every news issue. New schemes for patching up human life that it may go forth again to battle or return to industrial warfares of peace are heralded every week. New societies for the relief of human suffering due to the war are chartered constantly. New alignments of political groups committed to reform are in the making. New groupings of nations not formerly allied stand before our eyes. New methods of combining activities of great corporate interests for government needs are published daily. New trade possibilities now latent are prophesied as being inevitable. New ideals and new ideas gathered in the trenches are appearing over battle lines for new governmental practices. New advances in the field of government control of prices startle us continually.

Out of it all there looms up a new science of chemistry, improved methods of transportation in the air, a still greater standardization of making industrial products, a new conception of government control of trade and industry, a system of government insurance for individuals and corporations, new concepts of legislative authority and action, and a score of other things all heading up into a new sense of nationalism,--and who knows but even a sense of internationalism!

Is it credible that education alone will remain unaffected by these world changes?