The matter of education is one of timely interest and importance just now, for the war is sweeping away many old ideas and creating new ones that will materially affect the coming generation. We realize now that the interchange of instructors between our universities and those of Germany was not the benevolent scheme that we believed it to be, but an important step in the Kaiser's attempt to influence public opinion here by implanting his peculiar kultur in the breasts and minds of impressionable youth. We are beginning to understand also that in the future we shall be bound more closely than ever before to the civilized nations of the earth, and that it will be wise to impart to the young knowledge of the history, customs, and ideas of peoples other than their own. Returning soldiers will perhaps render efficient aid in this branch of study.
In the school of education that will be established after the war, care must be taken to give instruction in facts and allow individual opinion to follow its natural bent. To attempt a whole sale direction of the thoughts and reasoning power of the young is to create a nation of Germans, who think in platoons and whose highest ideal in personal conduct does not rise above blind obedience to their superior officers.
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