munities at a period in the girl's life when she is greatly in need of home environment.

The movement, of course, is only in its infancy. As. problems are solved by cooperative consideration the colleges will find more definitely their logical place in a well organized educational system, and accordingly will give greater social return for the investment that has been made in them. In less than three years, the movement has developed far enough to make it clear that by definite service in a wider educational order, the junior college is made: free to work out its own highest salvation.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

JESSE H. COURSAULT

VI
ENGLAND1

The members of an English family are apt not only to see each other's faults, but to speak of them before strangers, so that a stranger unused to this habit might think that they had no love for each other. They themselves take their love for granted, and do not care what strangers may think about it. And as it is with the family so it is with the country. A stranger comes among us, and we tell him all that we dislike about England. We have no domestic caution or sense of propriety in this matter. We point out to him how badly things are managed here, and speak of England as if it were an inefficient railway on which we have the misfortune to travel. And he, if he happens to be an industrious German, takes notes of all our complaints for future patriotic use. He thinks that they are dragged out of us by our unwilling sense of German superiority. He, even if he comes to England for his pleasure, is always a traveller for his country; and in England he is aware of no country, but only of a general discontent and indiscipline and disorder. There are Englishmen, he notes, but no England; nothing but a crowd of individuals who do not even pretend to think well of each other, and who would surely be happier and better men under German rule.

In Germany, patriotism, like everything else, is organized. It is one of those emotions which Germans experience at the word of command. But here there is no word of command, and we are not good at expressing our patriotism. We have our conscious patriots, but they are amateurish, and most of us either dislike their demonstrations or watch

This article, reprinted from the Literary Supplement of the London Times, November 19, 1914, is presumably by the same writer as the articles on France and Germany which were reprinted in the Educational Review for November, 1914.

them indifferently as if they were the ceremonies of some religious sect. They have a right to demonstrate, of course, like anyone else, but we wish that they would do it better and would not pay compliments to England that make us feel ashamed. We prefer them, indeed, when they show their patriotism by grumbling collectively as we all grumble individually, when they tell us, as a nation, that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. There we agree with them. Every institution in England, including the country, ought to be ashamed of itself, and every one who says so has our sympathy. We are always aware that institutions consist of human beings. The country itself consists of them, and we can not separate it from them, from the Englishmen whom we meet in the street and the train, and who are obviously very imperfect creatures like ourselves. To the German, Deutschland is something that does not consist of Germans. It is over all, over the Germans as well as every one else. It is an abstraction that can do no wrong, and of which it were blasphemy to speak ill. Whatever the Germans do collectively is done by Deutschland, and therefore justifies itself. But to us, whatever England does collectively is done by Englishmen, who are rather more apt to make fools of themselves together than separately. We are incapable of country-worship because it would mean to us the worshipping of each other and we would rather be godless altogether than do that.

That is why foreigners have often called our national policy egotistical. We ourselves know that it is the policy of Englishmen, not of an English god, and we can not persuade ourselves, or anyone else, that we have forgotten ourselves in country-worship. And that is also the reason why, as a country, we are called hypocritical. Because the nation, for us, consists of ourselves, we try to justify it morally. If it were an idol to us, we should not need to justify it. Whatever it did would be right as a matter of course, even if it violated a neutrality it was sworn to preBut there is an advantage in this desire to justify, tho it sometimes leads to hypocrisy and makes us unpleasant

serve.

to ourselves and to other nations. For national hypocrisy, unlike country-worship, has its limits. There is a point at which you can no longer persuade yourself that you are doing right when you are doing wrong. But since Deutschland can do no wrong, the Germans, being idolaters instead of hypocrites, never reach that point.

England is a country as much criticized by other nations as by herself. Every one tells us our faults; but about Germany there has long been a curious silence. The Germans themselves have proclaimed her beauty and strength and virtue; and the rest of the world has left them alone with her, for one does not argue with worshippers about the merits of their god. True, there has been a little unrest among their subject peoples, to whom Germany meant Germans, just as England means Englishmen to us, and who found it as impossible to worship Germany as to worship Germans. We also have subject peoples; and they do not worship England any more than we worship her ourselves. Indeed they grumble at her as we do, and we find no more blasphemy in their grumbling than in our own. But they are also as ready to fight for her as we are; and this fact surprizes the Germans, who believe on the evidence of those industrious notes of theirs -that we are not even ourselves ready to fight for her. They came to England and found no idol there like their own Deutschland; and they made a note that England did not exist. Perhaps we deceived them by our talk of the British Empire. In their sense of the word there is no British Empire, even in India. For an Empire to them means a State in which the rulers enjoy ruling because the subjects dislike being ruled. It means the imposition of an idolatry upon unwilling worshippers. But we have no idolatry to impose, only a government which we know is imperfect, as we ourselves are imperfect, and we wish we could make it better. So do our subject peoples; but they will fight for it against the Germans because they do not wish to be ruled for the honor and glory of Deutschland; and this is a fact which the Germans can not understand,

as James, Duke of York, did not understand that no one would kill his brother Charles to make him King.

One is inclined to wonder whether the Germans worship their abstract Deutschland so hard that they have no energy left to love the real Germany; whether indeed it exists for them at all except as a means of performing the will of that abstraction. But there is no doubt that for us the real England does exist, and that we love it all the more because we have not forgotten it to go and worship an idol. It means for us people and concrete things, and a past and a future of people and concrete things. We know it so well that we are always a little astonished at what it has done, as people are suprized by genius when it appears in their own family. It is a little land, as Morris said, "little rivers, little plains, swelling, speedily-changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep walks. All is little, yet not foolish and blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it; it is neither prison nor palace, but a decent home." These are quiet words, but they mean more love than they say. For all of us know this little land is abundant of meaning, and we seem to each other to be all of one family in our ancient home that is neither prison nor palace. We are men fighting, or ready to fight, for no idol that sanctifies even her own crimes, but for the English of the future who will do better, we hope, than we have done, and make this home of ours fairer than we have made it; and besides that we fight for certain things that seem good to us, as kindliness, freedom and good faith. They are modest virtues, not fit for a towering idol, but men can not be happy without them. They are not always our virtues, perhaps, but we wish that they were, and we listen to no professors who tell us that they are vices. We have been at ease in our home for so long that we did not know how much we loved it until it was threatened; and now we are surprized by our own passion and by the speaking beauty of our countryside and the gray churches in it and the villages that seem to trust so quietly in our