The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-10-08

When I was a young man, living in South Carolina, I became acquainted with member of the celebrated Lanier family. He was a man of about middle age, exceedingly interesting in conversa- tion with knowledge of English litera- ture, history in general and many other subjects that was very extensive. He could quote with much ease from hun dreds of authors. He was what would at one time have been called an edu- cated man. Indeed, we all spoke of him
 in that way and no doubt he thought of himself as blessed with a thorough edu- cation.
 Yet all of us had the feeling that there was something radically wrong with his education. for he seemed to have no practical ability whatever, no power to use towards making a living or service to his fellow man any of the many things he knew so well, and therefore he was more or less dependent upon his friends for the ordinary necessities or every day life. Somewhere I have seen a quotation like this, from the great em- pire builder of the west, J. J. Hill: seYoung men, do you want to know If you will succeed in life? I can tell you. The test is simple and infallible. Do you know how to save money? If you do not, step down; you will lose out; you may not believe you will, but you Will, TOT the seeds of success are not in you" My friend, MT. Lanier, had neither the power to make nor to save money, ana surely that education is no education worth the name that does not fit the man for the practical duties of lfe-that does not enable him to hake a living and do his task in the world; that does not make him, in other words, more efficient.
 The man who knows and yet does not know how is only partially educated. He can rightly be called educated in only a very limited sense. Therefore we are emphasizing today, and justly so more and more the practical. The spirit of the age says: eff I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet do not know to what use to put my knowledge, I am nothing" We are coming to be- lieve that all teaching of theory is vain unless there can be immediately prac- tical application of what is taught, that the bridge builder, for example, can be taught to build a bridge only by doing it. Class room work means little with out experiment and application of the principles taught.
 It is because the Germans have been taught efficiency that they are spoken of as the best educated people in the world. The whole WOrlu SD LIlIlhS oL them because they are so efficient, and they so think themselves. And yet there are signs that the world Is awaking to the fact that the education of the Ger mans, though far superior to that ot Ianier, is none the less a failure for, like that of Lanier it is only a partial education. It teaches how to make a living, how to overcome apparently in superable obstacles, in the making of things. but does 1t teach how to live? More has been taken in than in the case of Lanier, but not the whole man. The education of Lanier meant merely in formation, 1t did not teach him how to both enter into the education of the Ger with his fellow man. He is taught what is true, but not what is right, and to know what is right is quite as important as to know what is true pr. Edwin Davies Schoonmaker says in an article on "The Moral Failure of Efficiency" ;" Given the German training, the present war was as inevitable as that stone which has dropped four feet will drop the fifth if there be a fifth. It was just as certain as that the stars swing round that sooner or later Germany would seek to complete her natural orbit. Whether Germany counseled the Austrian stroke that was the technical cause of the present war is beside the point. The great fact that sooner or later will emerge from the present confusion and stand out clear to the philosophical his- torian of the future is that what is hap pening in Europe today is the logical out come of a partial and. therefore false