BY CHARLES W. ELIOT

The brief phrase--the schools and colleges of the United States--is a
formal and familiar one; but what imagination can grasp the infinitude
of human affections, powers, and wills which it really comprises? But
let us forget the outward things called schools and colleges, and summon
up the human beings. Imagine the eight million children actually in
attendance at the elementary schools of the country brought before your
view. Each unit in this mass speaks of a glad birth, a brightened home,
a mother's pondering heart, a father's careful joy. In all that
multitude, every little heart bounds and every eye shines at the name
of Washington.

The two hundred and fifty thousand boys and girls in the secondary
schools are getting a fuller view of this incomparable character than
the younger children can reach. They are old enough to understand his
civil as well as his military achievements. They learn of his great part
in that immortal Federal convention of 1787, of his inestimable services
in organizing and conducting through two Presidential terms the new
Government,--services of which he alone was capable,--and of his firm
resistance to misguided popular clamor. They see him ultimately
victorious in war and successful in peace, but only through much
adversity and many obstacles.

Next, picture to yourselves the sixty thousand students in colleges and
universities--selected youth of keen intelligence, wide reading, and
high ambition. They are able to compare Washington with the greatest men
of other times and countries, and to appreciate the unique quality of
his renown. They can set him beside the heroes of romance and
history--beside David, Alexander, Pericles, Cæsar, Saladin,