this method is universal public education.

Let Germany close her public schools, and in two generations she will
lapse back into the semi-darkness of medievalism; let her close both her
public schools and her universities, and three generations will fetch
her face to face with the Dark Ages; let her destroy her libraries and
break into ruin all of her works of art, all of her existing triumphs of
technical knowledge and skill, from which a few, self-tutored, might
glean the wisdom that is every one's to-day, and Germany will soon
become the home of a savage race, as it was in the days of Tacitus and
Cæsar. Let Italy close her public schools, and Italy will become the
same discordant jumble of petty states that it was a century ago,--again
to await, this time perhaps for centuries or millenniums, another
Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel to work her regeneration. Let Japan close
her public schools, and Japan in two generations will be a barbaric
kingdom of the Shoguns, shorn of every vestige of power and
prestige,--the easy victim of the machinations of Western diplomats. Let
our country cease in its work of education, and these United States must
needs pass through the reverse stages of their growth until another race
of savages shall roam through the unbroken forest, now and then to reach
the shores of ocean and gaze through the centuries, eastward, to catch
a glimpse of the new Columbus. Like the moving pictures of the
kinetoscope when the reels are reversed, is the picture that imagination
can unroll if we grant the possibility of a lapse from civilization to
savagery.

And so when we take the broader view, we quickly see that, in spite of
our pessimism, we are doing something in the world. We are part of that
machine which civilization has invented and is slowly perfecting to
preserve itself. We may be a very small part, but, so long as the