Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-07-10
A NDREW f. WEST, dean of the
IA Graduate School, Princeton

A NDREW f. WEST, dean of the
II Graduate School, Princeton
L n University, delivered a re-
markable address at the meeting of
the National Education Association
at Pittsburgh in which he held up
Germany as an example OF the folly
of a self-centered and exclusive ma
tional culture in the preparation OF
men for the realities OF LIE. Among
other things he said:
"a boy without memory cannot
be educated. A man without mem
ory needs some one to look after
him or he will go on repeating his
mistakes, because he is always for
getting what he needs to remember.
and especially the one thing he ought
always to remember; namely, that 1t
is not the man who makes mistake
but the man who repeats his mis-
takes who is known for fool. AND
a nation without a memory is in the
same deplorable plight. To remem-
ber we'll the things that ought to be
rememb mbered and to profit by them IS
the rule for a safe, strong and wise
life for every man and for every ma
ton,
THE past is not something dead
ANYTHING to do with it or not 1t re-
mains a fact that the past has great
deal to do with us. Our parents and
our parents parents may be physi-
cally dead and gone. but without
them we would not have been what
we are, and indeed would not be
here tonight. Whatever has hap
pened is a fact as inevitable as what
now happens or as what will hap
pen. The past is the parent. the pro-
ducing cause of the present.
And now, when the world seems
turned upside down, men need to re-
member these elementary and ele-
mental unchanging realities. For
there are voices of confusion telling
us that everything is changing, say
ing that little if anything of what we
have held as true can be depended on
for the future and bidding us clutch
at this or that panacea as the only
thing to cure our ills. The past, they
say, has little to teach us; for we
are Americans of the twentieth CEN
tury and should promptly cut loose
from bygone times, methods and
ideals and set up a brand new ma
tional culture of our own. In their
rejection of what they call tradition
they are forgetting something; they
are forgetting that the value of any
thing does not depend on whether
it is old or new but on whether it is
false or true.
"They are proposing to run Amer
lean education not on q record but
on a prospectus. They are in fact
telling us to lose our memories and
to forget what we shall forgetat our
peril; namely, that the past has ouI
main lesson to teach us and that the
man who does not see behind the
slurid, binding light of this world
war its deep lying causes for de-
cades and generations past, and or
back to the origins, cannot under
stand why this war happened mol
how to prevent it's happening again
nor even what it is that is now hap
pening. For he who does not re.
member what has gone before has
little means of judging what is hap
pening now or of forecasting what
will come after. 1t is no time tc
forget. 1t is the time to remember
everything and to forget nothing.
Listen to a voice from long ago
yet so clear and.near in it's tones thai
1t seems to be speaking now. There
is, VIC AFFIRM says Plato, AN immor'
tai conflict now going on, and calling
for marvellous vigilance. In 1t oui
allies are the gods and all gooC
spirits He is speaking of the age
long conflict of truth with error. 1
is clarion call of ancient freedom
across the centuries to us, not onl.
to the battle line in France but Il