earnest and hearty way, but intelligently as befits a professional man or

woman.

When we have received your suggestions-and we make this public appeal for them as an illustration of our method of work-when we have clarified our ideas as to what we wish to do and how it should be done, then we should propose a body of laws, not too many and not too detailed, but laws which ought to obtain in every state in the Union, and which every state will recognize as right and fair and wise, laws which will mean real opportunity for every man, woman, and child in the community, the state, and the nation.

Only by some such all-inclusive plan as this, we feel, can our nation ever be welded together into a true democracy. This welding is the great task of elementary education. It is your task as well as ours. Will you lend a hand?

MARY C. C. BRADFORD, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, DENVER, COLO.

During the progress of the world-war all countries began to realize that world-modifications on a huge scale were to be the results of that mighty conflict.

The National Education Association was among the first organizations of national scope to attain this self-realization and to consecrate itself to meeting the demands of the new day. It is fitting that the body of people representing the molders of the soul stuff of the world should lead in this great task, and the teaching force of the United States may well congratulate itself that its own organized means of self-expression proved equal to the great opportunity offered by the mighty years 1917-19. While envelopt in the murk of war clouds the teachers' organization was preparing itself to serve when the normal light of peace conditions should have returned. It prepared a plan thru which war-time activities in the school might merge into peace-time development of educational opportunity. It developt a national program for education that will meet present and future educational needs, and by so doing rendered a service of incalculable value to the Republic.

These accomplishments were effected thru the Commission on the Emergency in Education and the Program for Readjustment During and After the War, which was created by the President of the National Education Association at the beginning of the year 1918, ratified by the Executive Committee in February of that year at Atlantic City, and again indorst, its work approved, and its existence continued at the annual meeting of the National Education Association held in Pittsburgh, in July, 1918.

This Commission provides a permanent body thru which the Association may develop a permanent policy. Before its creation the Association largely functioned as a means for "unlimited academic discussion." There should have sprung some more definite action from the world-famous programs of this great body of school people. Yet this was impossible without a continuing body to formulate policies, develop principles, and execute plans. The Commission provides such a means of crystallizing the thought and incarnating the will of the school people of the United States.

From the beginning the chairman of the Commission has been George D. Strayer, who has also been the president of the Association since the close of the Pittsburgh meeting. To his clarity of mind and consecration of purpose is largely due the progress made by the Commission during the seventeen months of its existence, and he has received a very loyal support from all its members.

The first meeting of the Commission was held in Atlantic City in February, when a skeleton organization was formed. Since that time there have been four meetings held at national headquarters in Washingtion, one at Pittsburgh, and one at Chicago. At each conferences have been held with representatives of the national government, all other educational bodies, the American Federation of Labor, and numerous welfare societies. A great campaign has been maintained for the creation of a National Department of Education, whose chief shall have a seat in the President's cabinet, and which shall be so constituted that the preparation, supplying, and compensation of teachers shall be placed upon an honorable professional and advanst business basis; that the importance of rural education shall be recognized and its needs further met; that a complete program of physical and health education may be made possible; that the problems of immigrant education and adult illiteracy may be solved with glory to the country; that compulsory continuation schools may be establisht and maintained.

A mighty and successful propaganda is now in progress for the increase in the salaries of teachers, and a drive is on for increast membership in the National Education Association, to the end that the nearly eight hundred thousand American public-school teachers may each realize the vital relation between the welfare of the individual teacher, teachers as a class, and the great organization which can become efficiently and universally helpful to them only when they maintain a 100 per cent membership in this historic body.

The Commission has done remarkable work, not only on its own initiative, but in collecting, classifying, and coordinating the latest and best conclusions of educational thought and providing a coherent and courageous organism thru which to challenge unsound thinking and iniquitous discrimination. It demands with boldness that a hundred million dollars

a year be given to public-school education and sturdily claims congressional recognition for education that is partially at least commensurate with the dominating part it plays in the national development. It gathers for conference, "on the state of the nation" as affected by public education, such personalities as the following: W. C. Bagley, Carroll G. Pearse, Sarah Louise Arnold, Nina C. Vandewalker, J. V. Joyner, and the splendid body of educational leaders who are the colleagues of the men and women just mentioned.

The members of the Commission represent the great, historic, privately endowed colleges and universities; universities, colleges, and normal schools supported by public taxation; state departments of public instruction, and the great city systems from the kindergarten to the superintendencies. A thoroly representative group is this, and its members hold themselves as the chief servants of the teachers of the United States. So to serve them that the teaching profession may be exalted, that the educational activities of local community, commonwealth, and nation may be efficiently harmonized, that the childhood of America may be recognized as its most precious asset, and that our government may be so constituted that all the children of all the people shall have free opportunity for a full and happy development as conscious citizens of the highest governmental enterprise yet known to the mind of man, is the supreme aim and the dearest hope of this Commission.

This is your creation. Use it. Modify it. Challenge it. Test it. Sustain it, to the end that it may the more fully meet its obligation to civilization.

EDUCATION FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD

A. THE UNITED STATES

P. P. CLAXTON, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

To the distinguisht gentlemen who represent here this evening France and Great Britian I bring the greetings of a country dedicated to democracy from the beginning of its national life, and of a people which for three hundred years has been coming to understand ever more clearly that democracy is impossible without universal education, and that the fostering of right education and the promotion of the means therefor constitute the highest function of statesmanship and the first duty of the representatives of a free people.

It is fitting and well that representatives of the countries which before and thru the Great War have done most for the establishment of democracy in the world and for the preservation of freedom should meet here for the discussion of that education which alone can make democracy safe

for the world and for itself, and without which there can be no freedom worthy of the name. Our victory over the forces of autocracy and militarism brings with it great moral responsibility, because on us "lies the task of saving and reconstructing all that is worth saving in civilization." The task of building the new world on a surer foundation and in finer and more just proportions is ours.

We are all henceforth bound up in the sheaf of life together. The private weal of nations is dependent henceforth on the public welfare of the world. When division of labor has been extended to such an extent that international commerce is necessary to the very physical existence of all peoples, and blockades mean starvation; when air ships cross the Atlantic in sixteen hours; when the leaves and branches of the trees in Chevy Chase Park in Washington whisper to the ears of the listener messages sent out from Nauen, Germany; and a man in his cellar at Hyattsville, Maryland, talks thru the earth with another in Berlin; when that which is whispered in the closets of anarchy in Russia is proclaimed by an exploding bomb at the front door of the Attorney General of the United States, no country can hope longer to live unto itself. All isolations, splendid or otherwise, are gone forevermore.

Those who have been closer to the war than we have and who have borne a larger share of its burdens have, it appears, been more strongly affected in this respect than we have. This is shown by the heroic efforts of the French people to keep open their schools even when the life of the nation was in the doubtful balance, by their success in keeping children in school even within the lines of battle, and by their quick response in redoubled efforts to supply their educational needs as soon as the signing of the armistice gave time for thought of the future.

In the United States and elsewhere plans for education for democracy must be all-comprehensive and must be adapted, to the conditions and needs of all individuals. We still hold that all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and equality of opportunity, at least such equality of opportunity as may come thru education. To all must be given full and free opportunity for that kind and degree of education that will develop most perfectly their physical, mental, and moral manhood, fit them for the duties and responsibilities of democratic citizenship, prepare them for making a good and honest living for themselves and those dependent upon them, and for adding their just part to the common wealth by some form of useful, skilful work done intelligently and joyously. It must also guarantee to them a maximum of that sweetness and light, and of that deepening and widening, refining and ripening, of the human soul which we call culture-a thing quite different from the much-vaunted Kultur, which narrowed and hardened, darkened and poisoned and embittered the souls of another people and led them on toward destruction.

In our democracy there must be no forgotten man or woman, no lost waif of a child. If we would attain to our best and highest possibilities no important talent or ability of any child, however rare, the development of which would contribute to its own welfare and happiness or to the happiness and welfare of society, of state, or of the race, must be neglected or left uncultivated. The richness of society, of the state, and of the race consists not less in variety than in quantity.

Not only must society offer to all full and free opportunity for the kind and degree of education here indicated. Society must also see to it that no child at least is deprived of the opportunity offered, because of the poverty, the ignorance, the indifference, or the greed of its parents or guardians.

Of the elements of education first in importance is health: the establishment of good health and right health habits thru proper supervision and direction of the diet, the sleep, the recreation, and other activities of children, and such instruction in things pertaining to health as will insure a maximum of health and vitality in the population of the state and the nation. Like unto this and bound up with it is such physical education and training as will give to all strength of body and ready control of nerves and muscles and make them fit for all the duties of peace and war.

The examination of men called for the Army of the United States by the processes of the selective draft showed that somewhat more than one-third were unfit for full military service, and a smaller but still too large percentage were unfit for any form of military service, at a time when the standards were lowered to meet the emergencies of a great war into which we were preparing to send millions as we had sent into other wars hundreds of thousands. Had Germany succeeded against the armies of France and England before we were ready to go in, according to their plans and expectations, and if as a result the full strength of her victorious armies had been thrown against us, this depletion of our strength thru lack of physical fitness would have been felt severely and might have proved fatal. A recent health survey of one of our great states, which happens to contain almost exactly one-fiftieth of the population of the United States, revealed the fact that five hundred thousand persons, nearly one-fourth of its entire population, are sick all the time. If only half of these, a low estimate, are persons of producing age, and if the loss in productive power is only five hundred dollars a year, again a low estimate, then the loss to this state in productive power is not less than $125,000,000 a year. Add to this the time of those who must care for the sick, and the loss from weakened energy of those who are accounted well, and the $125,000,000 may well be doubled. This is a loss altogether too large for this or any other state when most of it may easily be avoided by proper care, instruction, and training. Multiply the $250,000,000 lost