Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-26
WHO WILL ENDOW THE
PEACE OF THE WORLD?
Money for an International Exchange Of Stu.
dents Would Effectively Buttress the
League Of Nations

| cas- spokesman to the nations is former
college professor that the man men
toned as probably the next ambassador
from London to Washington is the
British Minister of Education, a distin-
| guished scholar and university man, Mr..
| Herbert Fisher. In the terribly complex
and embittered confusion that faces us
we shall have to undertake with patient
method the gradual process of interna-
tunal enlightenment and mutual under
standing that have hitherto only pros
pered by hazard
The league-of nations plan provides
the skeleton machinery, WHICH must be
clothed with the tissues of friendship
and discernment if it is to be more than
prismatc dream. The British, with
their pragmatic habit of viewing things
in the large, have already taken impor-
tant steps to encourage the interchange
of students and teachers between Great
Britain and this country. Even before
the armistice was signed the British
universities mission was on its way over
here to discuss plans for increasing the
mutual circulation Of students.
1t is to be hoped that our own coun-
try will not be backward in developing
plans to extend this valuable idea. Our
period of self-satistied aloofness is at an
end. II is important that we should
send our students abroad. 1t is no less
important that we should take every
possible step to encourage foreigners to
come here. Think what it would mean
-. IL. s..4o
ing if some great government fund could
be appropriated for scholarships to be
awarded to qualified young men of all
lands to visit America and pursue their
studies in our colleges for one or more
years. Just now the great menace is
said to be Bolshevism. This, if we un-
derstand it at all, is not merely hunger.
1t is hunger of the spirit as well as
hunger of the flesh. 1t thrives on ignor-
ance, which is the root of hatred. Sup
pose we had had, for the last thirty
years or so, hundred students a year
coming to this country from the univer-
sites Of Russia and central Europe. 1t
is unlikely that we would have had to
speak of Russia as a menace" or that
Russia would have spoken Of US in the
same terms. The only real buffer state
against the ills of the future is education
in one another's problems, habits and
ways of thinking.
Occasionally great individuals have
taken up this problem and endeavored
toward a solution. Adolph Kahn in
Paris founded the Kahn Travelling Eel
lowships to send English and American
college teachers travelling round the
world on liberal stipend. The magnif-
cent scheme of Cecil Rhodes is known to
all. The operations Of the Rhodes trust
naturally fell into allegiance during the
war, but are now to be revived, under a
new and more liberal working plan,
which offers generous opportunities for
graduate work to American Rhodes
scholars. Even the Kaiser's exchange
professorships, though in the light of
retrospect they seem like propaganda,
were in great part an honest and a vau-
able contribution to International en-
lightenment. What we would like to see
now is some notably generous endow-
ment in this country, either govern
mental or private, that will bring to our
seats of learning the fresh and inspiring
presence of thousands of foreign stu
! dents, eager to examine our civilization
| for themselves. 1t is hard to say what
a notable influence for good has been
| the presence of thousands of japanese
undergraduates in our colleges during
| the last generation. The earlier mem
| bers of that succession of eager young
men have now become leading citizens in
| Il. -. 1nx =.
we can safely intrust the Interpretation
of American ideals and motives in times
| of crisis. Influences of that sort are
| quite as powerful as any written
| treaties.
The number of Mexican students in
| American universities has increased in
! significant fashion in the last two years.
We look forward to the day when from
all over Central and South America
constant stream of the best blood Of
their youth will come to study under our
professors, to fraternize with our under
graduates and to carry back to their
home circle a keen understanding of
what we have and are.
The air these days is full of many and
strange voices. The world has been
shaken out of its old composure; every
where men are yearning for some assur-
ance that all the horrors of the last
years have not been in vain. After so
terrible an ordeal, shaking the pillars of
civilization to their very basis, it is
natural that the rebuilding of peace
should be long, painful task. Panics,
social revolutions, infinite confusion and
long disorder must. be the inevitable
aftermath of the cynical act of those
irresponsible maniacs who deliberately
threw the worlds machinery out Of gear.
But slowly, gropingly, order and sense
+ will reassert themselves. It must be our
task to prop and stabilize order by a
patient, systematic campaign Of inter-
! L aa4innal adncaIion WhAn Nc ara na.l