Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-10-01
CAN UNIVERSITIES FINISH
WHAT THE A. E. r. BEGAN?
The Army, With No LeanInes Toward
ExcIusiveness, Was the Greatest Of
Ali Schools of AmerleanlzatIon

N THE crush Of returning students at
all of the American universities are
many who left the classrooms for active
service in the war. These veterans are
in many ways wiser even than their pro-
fessors. They were flung out to tramp
and fight and die in furious years that
never were prophesied in any textbook.
Of the aims and ends of that colossal
adventure they knew little. They know
little now.
But some of them at least have devel-
oped a great curiosity. What they may
want to know is why war was required
to give them their first glimpse of the
larger life of their own country and an
enlightened conception of it's variety and
its wonders.
If unpreparedness persisted anywhere
in the days before the submarine it per-
sisted in the colleges. University life
was a highly artificial business. The
undergraduate moved in a constantly
narrowing realm of his own, where edu
cation gradually became process of
exclusion. He had no means of knowing
that his mind was being Systematically
impoverished. And so even your senior
was accustomed to display piteous
sense of superiority over the furious
world that waited to maui him absent
mindedly, to reduce him to atoms and to
make him over again in endurable form.
The fault was not with the youth of
the country. There had been a gradual
and slow surrender in the faculties. The
wise professors sighed-and accepted
material rather than moral factors as
| dominant considerations in the educa-
tional scheme. Men were trained. They
were rarely educated, since education is
worth little if it does not 60 beyond
mans mind to temper his spirit.
Skill won the war. Wisdom might have
prevented it.
George Moore observes somewhere
| that the most cultured man he ever met
was a railroad navy who, knowing little
| of the rules of English, yet had a con-
templative mind, an imagination and a
great heart. This view of education was
| not common in America or anywhere
else.
So the young men who went from
American universities to the war found
| themselves close to the earth for the
| first time in their lives, caught in the
stupendous tides of passion and spiritual
restlessness which, though they rule
creation, were rarely the subject of COL
lege lectures. American youths actually
got acquainted with each other and with
their country after they entered the
army-but not before there had been a
rude breaking down of ancient barriers
through the operation of The draft sys-
TEN.
The army was the greatest Of univer-
sites and it is mistake to suppose that
| its efforts were limited to the discipline
or the technical training provided in the
camps.
The men who organized the new army
knew that they would have to deal with
all sorts of men. They drew soldiers
from colleges and shops, rich clubs and
| farms, from the mines and the profess
sions. And there was rarely an alien
new in the country who didn't find him
self bunked in barracks between two
native Americans who had the advan-
tages of American tradition and Ameri-
can schooling.
The stranger in America was not the
only one who benefited by this system.
He learned the language through asso-
citation with his bunkies-and often
enough he used it to teach his bunkies
something valuable in return. There are
college men without number who found
new sort of inspiration in the patience
and fortitude of the alien soldier
Through him they had new,glimpses of q
larger world Little hopes burned in him
like dim lamps and in that light tbs
meaning of the war became more or less
clear.
It was an odd experience for counties!
thousands of Americans to find that il
railway gangs, in the bitches of the
country, in the mills and on the farms
there are men of sensitive minds who
though they might not always know ever
our language, know how to be honorable
aspiring and brave.
In those days many Americans will
college minds formulated their first clea
conception of what America must be ant
of what education in America must be
Somehow or other we shall have to fin,
a way to realize an aristocratic concep
ton of the democratic purpose. The col
leges will have to broaden their visiol
until it includes the whole aspiring lif
of the country We shall have to acquir
sort of steadying philosophy that wa
not available at the universities in tn
time when college life was hopelessl
cluttered over with fads and fraternitie
and football and million isms. If tn
war taught the colleges anything it mus
have taught them the folly of exclusive
ness and the futility of strictly util
, tartan purpose in education. Sinnilarl!
it should have taught America at larg
to understand how empty were the sneer
that used to be aimed at what we calle
"the classics" only few years ago.