present crisis.

The paramount effect of the War on education is, however, in the
multiplied demand for efficiency. This is the cry all across the
country to-day, and, in the main, it is just. Our education has been
too academic, too much molded by tradition. It must be more closely
related to life and to the changed conditions of industry and commerce.
Each boy and girl, youth and maiden, must leave the school able to take
hold somewhere and make a significant contribution to the society of
which he or she is an integral part. Vocational training must be
greatly increased. The problems of the school must be increasingly
practical problems, and thought and judgment must be trained to the
solution of those problems. This is all a part of that socialization of
democracy which must be achieved if democracy is to survive in the new
world following the War.

There is, nevertheless, an element of emotional hysteria in the demand
for efficiency and only efficiency. Efficiency is too narrow a standard
by which to estimate anything concerning human conduct and character.
In the effort to meet and conquer Germany, let us beware of the mistake
of Germany. One of the world tragedies of this epoch is the way in which
Germany has sacrificed her spiritual heritage, first for economic, then
for purely military efficiency. When we recall that spiritual heritage,
as previously described, when we think of Schiller, Herder and Goethe,
Froebel, Herbart and Richter, Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher, Kant,
Fichte and Schopenhauer, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner, we stand aghast
at the way in which she has plunged it all into the abyss,--for what?
Shall it profit a people, more than a man, if it gain the whole world
and lose its own soul?