home and in school, and loyalty to these simple ties can spread circle by circle in the child's growth till it reaches the goal of good-will among all men. The aim is to promote action, prompted by an appreciation of the obligations of a citizen who takes his part in the development of modern civilization. As soon as a child is old enough to be conscious of ties outside his own being he begins his life as a member of society, with duties and obligations. These outside relations form the incipient beginnings of citizenship. A child is a little citizen in his own sphere, which gradually widens until he assumes the functions of a citizen in its broad sense. His first consciousness of relation to others develops in his contact with home life; his next important activity concerns himself as a member of the school; then as a member of his city and state; as a citizen of his country, and finally as a member of the larger social group, the world.

In this course the early grades are devoted to the ties of home life; the next proceed with the school and the playground; then the city and state; the nation, and the world. The course leads the pupil into the study of international rights and obligations. He is taught to appreciate other peoples and other civilizations and to understand the special mission of the United States in world progress. The committee is now collecting suitable material for each grade from history, literature, geography and civics to illustrate these lessons. Such material will be published in book form, one for each grade of school, together with the full outline for all the grades.

The History Committee is aiming to bring about a new conception of history and to encourage such teaching which shall accord with the twentieth century idea of world progress. The pupil who is taught by this method will learn of the high significance of those things which enter into a true conception of civilization. The committee is now preparing a manual on the teaching of history which will include a model course of study with detailed and explicit suggestions for the teacher.

The League does not confine its activities to this country. From the beginning its aim was to secure the interest of

teachers in all countries in the movement for international co-operation, so that the coming generations all over the world might be imbued with the spirit of good-will and an appreciation of justice.

Through the initial efforts of the League, the Dutch Government has called an International Conference on Education to meet at The Hague next September, when the teaching of history and the teaching of citizenship will occupy an important place on the program. The coming together of the representatives of the nations will result in a common knowledge of the purpose which each nation has at heart, for through the educational system of a country one can understand its ideals. It can not be doubted that a systematic effort to understand one another educationally will foster mutual respect and good-will among the nations. The International Council of Education, which we hope will be the result of this International Conference, will, therefore, be a substantial contribution to the effort to secure the peace of the world.

Education, then, is a panacea for international friction. Education will develop that public opinion to which the nations will surely respond.

A SYMPOSIUM ON DISARMAMENT

THE ISSUE OF "ADEQUATE" DEFENSE
Thursday Afternoon, May 1, at 2 o'clock

THE ODEON.

PROFESSOR ROLAND G. USHER, OF WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, Presiding

PROFESSOR USHER:

Mr. Carnegie was to have presided at this meeting, but the very strenuous work of the morning has compelled him to rest and he is not able to be with us this afternoon. It has fallen to my lot to preside. The subject for this symposium is Disarmament. We mean what we say in the announcement. After the chair has called upon a certain number of speakers we shall invite remarks from the floor.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you first, Philip Van Ness Meyer, author, scholar, pacifist, for a number of years a man of repute well able to speak to us upon the question of disarmament.

The New Conscience

PHILIP VAN NESS MEYER.

The only word which I shall venture to contribute to this symposium on disarmament is a word as to the way in which the teacher can best aid this great cause.

We must note, first, that the condition precedent of the final and complete triumph of this movement is the creation of a new conscience in regard to the entire war system as an internationally recognized and legalized institution of modern civilization; for, believe me, it is the new conscience, and not the new dreadnought, that is going to abolish war and keep it abolished. Men will never stop fighting merely because fighting is costly and dangerous. History affords sufficient

evidence of this. Men will stop fighting only when they can. no longer fight with a good conscience. Hence the awakening of this new conscience in the young must be the aim of the teacher who would help make real the prophetic vision of the nations dwelling together in peace and unity in a disarmed world.

Now, every science related directly or indirectly to man, interpreted with insight and breadth of view, becomes an effective means of awakening true moral feelings and judgments respecting war and the ruinous expenditures of the nations on the implements of war.

Biology has already made valuable contributions to this campaign of moral education. I need merely refer to the great biological argument against war as embodied in that notable work entitled "The Human Harvest," by President Jordan. That little book, showing how the destruction in war of the flower of the young manhood of the nations generation after generation results, through the inevitable workings of biological laws, in such a degeneracy of the human stock as imperils the very existence of modern civilization, has created in thousands new feelings and a new conscience, not merely as to the irrationality, but as to the criminality of war between civilized nations.

Likewise should the ethical element in economics be stressed. The economic argument against war should be turned into a moral argument, and its force thereby enhanced many fold. This can be done, because all economic questions are at bottom moral questions. The expenditure yearly by the nations on their competitive war armaments of sums counted by thousands of millions must be shown to be something which concerns not the economist alone, but the moralist as well. Conscience is deeply involved in this thing. An eminent worker in the peace cause has put it all in a phrase. He has said, "I should like to add an eleventh command to the Ten Commandments, and it would be this: "Thou shalt not waste thy substance.'" This waste of communal resources on war armaments, whereby every social, intellectual, and moral interest of society suffers from lack of adequate support, is the national sin of this age.

But of all the sciences none can be made, through presentation from the moral point of view, more directly contributory to the creation of a new conscience respecting the essential wickedness of war than the science of history. This is so because of the moral content of history. History has been defined as applied psychology. We make the definition narrower and maintain that history is applied conscience. Conscience is the great history maker. The great issues of history, like this issue of disarmament, are moral issues. The great reforms and revolutions of history are moral in their deepest causes as well as in their most important and enduring effects. They result ever from a divergence between what is and what ought to be. And because this is so-because the essence of true history is the record of the moral life of man, is the story of the conflict of good and evil within the human soul and its awakening through the travail of the ages to a clearer "vision of the divine;"-because this is so, this great drama of humanity, like the drama of the stage, as conceived by the greatest of Greek philosophers, has a cleansing and clarifying effect upon the moral sense.

The limitations of time under which we speak forbid our offering any proofs or illustrations of this one thesis, that history envisioned and interpreted, not in terms of politics, as has been our wont hitherto, but in terms of ethics, in terms of the unfolding moral consciousness of man, may be made a powerful means of creating in the young a conscience uncompromisingly intolerant of war and of these insane, suicidal expenditures of the nations on all the infernal enginery of war.

I offer merely my personal confession of faith—a faith created and confirmed by the evidences of an unfolding and increasing moral purpose in the historic evolution: I believe that through an ethical necessity the day of the universal disarmament of the nations approaches; that there dawns a better age, the men of which will look with the same incredulous amazement upon our engines and devices for wholesale mankilling that we of this age look upon the Iron Virgin of Nuremberg and the other infernal mediæval instruments of torture in the museums of Europe.