remark of the Rector of the University of Nancy was warranted. I had been looking at the broken walls of an elementary school, wreckt by a shell which fell upon it in the midst of a morning's session. The master of the school, when the shells began to fall near the school building, timed the interval between the first shells, got his children in line for marching, and then the moment a third or fourth shell fell, marcht them to a building seventy paces away that had a cellar with stout walls. The next shell penetrated the school building and would doubtless have killed or maimed all the children had they remained. I said to the Rector that this teacher should have been given the Croix de Guerre. "No," said the Rector, "No, any teacher in France would have done this"-which recalls a sentence from the first report of the present Director of Elementary Education after the beginning of the war, to the effect that the teachers having been accustomed before the war to think continuously of the good of their pupils were kept even in the trenches from egotism and selfishness.

And I find better figure than my own in the tribute of this gentle Director, whom I found in his office in the Rue de Grenelle, but in daily touch with this "scholastic front":

We admire, not without reason, the serenity of the farmer who, two steps from the battle line, is sowing for the future his grain on the bloody furrows. [And many such farmers or farmers' wives I saw on those furrows, while the little puffs of smoke showed that the enemy was in their skies.] Let us admire none the less these teachers who, all along the line of fire, hold their classes within the sound of the cannon; they also are sowing for the future.

Again and again in my journey there came to me the saying of Voltaire: "The spirit of France is the candle of Europe." Voltaire saw it glowing in peasants' huts, and he would see it now in the trenches were he in France today; but I saw its flame too in the dim-cloistered places of learning, in the halls of the lycées, and even in little and meagerly furnisht rooms of the schools of France, which except for its light would have seemed sad and somber places. And one could but recall too (one must add in this connection) what Voltaire said further in speaking of this candle of Europe, as if in divination of what has come to pass. "You English," he said, "(nor all others) can blow it out. . . . . And you English will be its screen against the blowing out, tho in spasms of stupidity you flaunt the extinguisher."

The winds, savage in temper and fury beyond any that have ever blown over the earth, have been driving across France from the northeast, winds that have razed villages to dust, that have felled trees by thousands in the fields, that have poisoned waters with their breath, that have shown no respect for schools or hospitals or churches, that have not only denuded the fertile earth in their path, but torn it so that it will not for years, if ever, be able to support life. But despite all this the spirit of France, the candle of Europe, is unquencht.

France has restricted the use of food, fuel, and light; she has discouraged travel except for reasons of necessity; she has mobilized every ablebodied man for present defense; but she has not for one moment forgotten her future defense. She has even opened schools in caves and occasionally provided teachers and pupils with gas masks; she has put women by thousands in the places of men teachers called to the front; she has received back into service many men with marks of honor upon their breasts, who have been incapacitated by wounds, to teach again in the schools they had left. Indeed I have seen many hundreds of children from the occupied territory being taught in casernes (barracks) by their women teachers who had fled with them. But she has not except under compulsion of cannon and bombs taken from any child that heritage in which alone is the prophecy of an enduring nation.

The able-bodied men of France are fighting in the first army to preserve the candle that holds the flame, but the teachers are fighting as valiantly in the other to make the candle worth the grim game-this candle of Europe which has become the candle of civilization.

The advice which France, out of her physical anguish but unabated aspiration of spirit, sends to us from her "scholastic front" is this:

Do not let the needs of the hour, however demanding, or its burdens however heavy, or its perils however threatening, or its sorrows however heart-breaking, make you unmindful of the defense of tomorrow, of those disciplines thru which the individual may have freedom, thru which an efficient democracy is possible, thru which the institutions of civilization can be perpetuated and strengthened. Conserve, endure taxation and privation, suffer and sacrifice, to assure to those whom you have brought into the world that it shall be, not only a safe, but also a happy, place for them.

Not that France has put this advice into words. She would consider that presuming. It is the advice of her doing that I have attempted to translate.

TOPIC: NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR EDUCATION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE

A. THE STATUS OF NEGRO EDUCATION

KELLY MILLER, DEAN OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution made the Negro a citizen of the United States. By fiat of law the status of the chattel was suddenly transformed into that of the citizen. The national government was wholly responsible for the creation of Negro citizenship, a responsibility which involved the obligation to prepare him for his new function in the government. But his education was left to the afflicted states, which had recently been disrupted and disorganized by the ruinous ravages of war. Consequently, for the most part the freedman was left to shift for himself in his upward struggle from ignorance to enlightenment. It was hoped

that his enfranchisement might enable him to exert the requisite influence on the policy of the several states, leading to the establishment of adequate educational provision. Amidst all the imperfections and misdeeds of reconstruction, actual or alleged, there stands out in bold relief one clear redeeming feature. Actuated by the purpose of qualifying the Negro for proper exercise of his citizenship function, the reconstruction governments establisht the public-school system in the several Southern States.

But actual experience soon demonstrated what prudent prevision should have foreseen, namely, that the recently impoverisht and distracted Southern States were not, of themselves, able to maintain adequate school systems for the efficient education of both races. Their heroic effort must be supplemented by national provision, or else the South for many generations must lag behind other sections of the nation, and the efficiency of the nation as a whole will be seriously impaired.

We are likely to be misled by statistics of illiteracy showing the remarkable rapidity with which the Negro is acquiring the use of letters. Beginning practically at the zero point of literacy, at the time of his emancipation, the rate of literacy had arisen to 70.6 per cent in 1910. The rapidity with which the Negro race has progrest in literacy has been considered the most marvelous attainment of the past century. In the period of fifty years a considerable majority of its members has learned the use of letters. This is a much larger percentage than is shown by many of the historic races of the Old World.

Altho 70 per cent of the Negro race can read and write, comparatively a small fraction of that number actually make an efficient use of their attainments. In the states which require a literacy test for the exercise of franchise the great majority of Negroes are excluded because of their inability to meet this simple test, albeit the statistics of such states show a high average of Negro literacy. Statistics of illiteracy are misleading because the individual pride which indisposes him to have his ignorance acknowledged and recorded often leads the Negro to render misleading answer to the query of the enumerator.

At Camp Dodge, where there were 3600 Negro conscripts from Alabama, no one of whom, under the terms of conscription was over thirty-one year of age, the Young Men's Christian Association found that over 50 per cent of them were unable to read or write, notwithstanding the fact that the rate of Negro illiteracy in Alabama, according to the federal statistics is only 40.1 per cent. There is one conspicuous outstanding fact, that the great majority of the Negro race are not able to make use of literary knowledge to improve their efficiency, or measure up to the standard of an enlightened citizenship.

When we consider the woeful inadequacy of provision made for Negro education there is left no room to marvel because of this alarming result. According to reports just issued by the Bureau of Education, the state of

Alabama expends $1.78 per capita for each Negro child, the state of Georgia $1.76, and Louisiana $1.31. These states expend from five to six times this amount per capita for the schooling of white children. It is conceded that even the provision for the education of the white children of the South is scarcely more than one-third of that for the education of a child in the North and West. If it requires $25 per capita to prepare for the duties of citizenship in the North, a white child whose powers are reinforced by racial and social heredity, by what law of logic or common sense can it be expected that $1.31 will prepare a Negro child in Louisiana, who misses such reinforcement, for the exercise of like functions?

Without national aid to Negro education the Southern States must continue for generations under the heavy handicap of a comparatively ignorant and ill-equipt citizenship.

It is a fatal mistake to suppose that the efficient education of the Negro can be conducted on a cheaper scale than that of the whites. The fact that his home environment and his general grade of life are lower, makes adequate educational facilities all the more expensive.

Philanthropy, to a commendable degree, has served to supplement the deficiencies of the Southern States for Negro education. But neither the individual state nor the United States has the moral right to depend upon voluntary philanthropy to prepare its citizens for the responsible duties and obligations of citizenship. At best, philanthropy is only a temporary and inadequate makeshift. As high as philanthropic contribution seems to be in the aggregate, it amounts to little more than one dose of medicine in the hospital, when compared to the magnitude of the task to which it is applied.

It was unfair to the Southern States to require them, unaided, to prepare the Negro for duties of citizenship at the time of his enfranchisement. The nation as a whole was responsible for the condition of the Negro. The fact that slavery became a localized institution was not due to the inherent deviltry of the South nor to the innate goodness of the North. Slavery was a national institution and became localized under the operation of climatic and economic law. It is equally unfair today to require the South to bear the heavy burden alone. The Negro problem is the nation's problem; the remedy should be as comprehensive as the need.

So far I have dealt with the demands for federal assistance to primary and elementary education, which imparts to each citizen a more or less well-understood minimum of necessary knowledge and standard of efficiency. But there is a higher sense in which the nation is obligated to the cause of Negro education. At the time of his emancipation the Negro was left wholly without wise guidance and direction. The sudden severance of the personal relation which had existed complacently under the régime of slavery left the Negro dependent upon his own internal resources for the leadership of his higher and better life. The discipline of slavery had illy

fitted him for this function. It had imparted to him the process without the principle, the knack without the knowledge, the rule without the reason, the formula without the philosophy. If the blind lead the blind they will both fall into the ditch. For want of vision people perish. The professional class constitutes the higher light of the race, and if that light within this race be darkness, how great is that darkness.

The federal government should make some provision for those who are to stand in the high places of intellectual and moral authority. In the Western States, where philanthropical millionaires are scarce and where the average citizen is not able to support the system of education on the higher level, the state undertakes the task of maintaining higher institutions of learning for the leaders in the various walks of life. The Negro is unable at present to maintain such institutions for his own race; he is dependent upon a remote and vicarious philanthropy.

Already thru land-grant and other federal funds, the government, in cooperation with the several states, is supporting agricultural and mechanical colleges for white youth. Some provision is also made for the Negroes in the states where there is scholastic separation of the races. But these agricultural and mechanical colleges are essentially schools of secondary grade and cannot be maintained on a high level of collegiate basis. It is easy for the federal government to extend the application by establishing and maintaining at least one institution of technical character and collegiate grade which might serve as a finishing school for the work done in the several states. The Negro needs to be rooted and grounded in the principles of knowledge on the highest collegiate basis. The federal government has already acknowledged this responsibility in the moderate support which it gives to Howard University as the national institution of the Negro race. This acknowledgment of a national responsibility, let us hope, augurs early ample provision for the education of a race in its upward struggle to the stature of American citizenship.

B. THE NATION'S RESPONSIBILITY TO THE SOUTH FOR

NEGRO EDUCATION

W. T. B. WILLIAMS, FIELD AGENT FOR THE JEANES FUND AND THE SLATER FUND, HAMPTON INSTITUTE, HAMPTON, VA.

Now that we are engaged in positively championing the cause of democracy for the world it may not be amiss for us to take a look into our own household. Our government has its only secure basis in the education of its citizens. And our remarkable prosperity has long been attributed to the high average intelligence and the resulting efficiency of our workers. The nation then should see to it that such arch enemies of democracy and