FEBRUARY, 1927 VOL. XI—No. 6 


Democracy in Education _ Education for Democracy 


The 
American leacher 


THE ORGAN OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 











—World Fellowship— 
A Prayer 


for the Spiritual Union of Mankind 


Eternal God, Father of All Souls: 
Gr unto us such clear vision of the sin of War, that me 

may earnestly seek that co-operation between Nations mbhich 
alone can make War impossible 4 As man by his inventions has 
made the mhole morld into one neighborhood, Grant that he may, 
by his ro-operations, make the whole world into one brotherhood 
’# Gelp us to break down all race prejudice, stay the greed of 
those who profit by War, and the ambitions of those who seek an 
Imperialistic Conquest 3# Guide all Statesmen to seek a just 
basis for International action in the interests of Peare 3# Arouse 
in the whole body of the people an adventurous willingness, As 
they sacrificed greatly for War, so, also, for International Gond- 

will, To dare bravely, think wisely, decide resolutely 
and to achieve triumphantly. Amen. 


Garry Emerson Fosdick 




























Published b 
AMERICAN FEDERATION EBB 20 327 So. La'Salle St., Chicago 


Single Copy 15c--Yearly Subscription $1.00 


2 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 






























































TLIG ALRAGRICAN TRAC LCP 


_ 
Vol 
VISION OF THE FUTURE — 
é 
By Lord Tennyson 
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When .the schemes and all the systems, Earth at last a warless world, 
Kingdoms and Republics fall, A single race, a single tongue— 
Something kindlier, higher, holier— We have seen her far away— I 
All for each and each for all. For is not Earth as yet so young? he 
All the full brain, half brain races, Every tiger madness muzzled, den 
Led by Justice, Love, and Truth; Every serpent passion kill’d, act, 
All the millions one at length, Every grim ravine or garden, that 
With all Visions of one’s youth. Every blazing desert till’d. the 
All diseases quenched by Science, Robed in universal harvest 7 
No man halt, or deaf, or blind; Up to either pole she smiles, — 
Stronger ever born of weaker, Universal ocean softly coll 
Lustier body, larger mind. Washing all her warless isle. abo 
deb 
the 
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cha: 
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The Roxbury School , 
CONTENTS y Ae 
for Boys “ 
Page ° $ 
Military ‘Training in American Col- Cheshire, Connecticut _ 
leges and High Schools........ whi 
Irving Maurer c ARE you seeking a school to recom- : 
. mil: 
Our Government and’ Mexico..... 5 mend to special students ? he 
Frederick J. Libby The attention of the teachers who read reat 
. < this magazine is invited to the advantages 
R. O. T. C. in High School........ 7 of the ROXBURY SCHOOL, a boarding the 
R. E. Blount school combining sound scholastic train- and 
Poison Gas Protocol............. 9 ing with careful attention to the needs of mil 
the individual. student. ther 
Excerpts from Speech of John the; 
nS eee 9 A large faculty and small instruction 
‘torial 14 units admit of great flexibility in fitting =e 
EY icdciuehiecbenesenee a boy’s program to his particular needs. \ 
Book Reviews «ei... 0.6 cee tee 18 Roxbury meets the requirements of high 191 
: school students who wish special prep- era 
ee ee. wn Ka weneed 21 aration for college. Tra 
Pe 22 A. N. SHERIFF, the 
Headmaster. 











‘The American Teacher 


Entered as second class matter October 20, 1926, at the post office at 


Illinois, under the Act of March 8, 1879. Acceptance 











Volume XI, No. 5 


Chicago, 
for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of February 28, 1925, authorized November 38, 1926. 


One Dollar a Year 





FEBRUARY, 1927 





“Resolved That Military Training in American 
Colleges and High Schools Should Be Abolished” 


Irving Maurer, President, Beloit College 


I realize that a resolution that military training 
be abolished in our schools and colleges is aca- 
demic. Land-grant colleges, through the Morrill 
act, were given their charters partly on the basis 
that, among the special technical arts and sciences 
they were to teach, military training was included. 
The fact that it will be almost impossible to re- 
move military training from these schools and 
colleges would make any argument favoring 
abolishing such training futile. If we are to 
debate on common ground we shall have to face 
the facts covering such schools and colleges for 
which military training is not, written into their 
charters. While I favor abolishing military train- 
ing from all schools and colleges, I am quite 
ready to admit that for land-grant colleges, my 
attack is probably the breaking of a lance against 
a stone door. One fact, however, I do wish to 
stress is that, in land-grant colleges, military 
training is not, by the Morrill act, compulsory. 
Such compulsion is the act of the institution 
which so decides. 

Nor am I ready to attack the principle that 
military schools should be abolished. It would 
be a good thing if they were. But I am quite 
ready, in a democratic land like ours, to admit 
the right of citizens to organize military schools 
and academies, to which parents, if they wish 
military training for their children, can send 
them. Why any parents want such training for 
their children I cannot, in this day and age, see 
at all clearly. 

What I am proposing is that the defense act of 
1916 and 1920 be so amended as entirely’ to 
eradicate from its provisions the Reserve Officers 
Training Corps so far as these are provided by 
the War Department for American schools and 
colleges, for the high schools in American cities 
and for the colleges and universities which, be- 
fore that act, had been functioning without this 
military department. 


My proposition is that the recent defense act 
in thus invading our schools and colleges was a 
mistake which ought as soon as possible be rec- 
tified. Military defense may be needed, although 
the last ten years have changed my mind on the 
point. But schools and colleges are not the place 
where such defense shall be arranged for. It is 
not my task to arrange for such,defense. I am, 
in spite of six years in National Guard work, not 
a military man. My task as an educator is to 
stand for the defense and the betterment of all 
schools and colleges, to insist that the educational 
task for such schools and colleges is paramount, 
to maintain that the chief business of schools and 
colleges is education. I maintain that a military 
defense, obtained at the cost of transforming our 
schools and colleges into quasi-military training 
camps, is no defense at all, for it will, if pressed 
to fullest efficiency, profoundly change the quality 
and spirit of our educational institutions, and 
produce, not students but soldiers, a country 
trained for war, but weak in the leadership which 
is our best defense against war. 

The Morrill Land-Grant act was passed by 
Congress in 1862. Up to 1916 the military train- 
ing given in the colleges on the basis of the act 
was not, from a military point of view, very 
high grade. No one seriously considered the 
drill as pointing to the training of soldiers. The 
idea of military drill in our high schools was 
not accepted as of any value, either by the War 
Department or by educational leaders. In 1925, 
sixty-three high schools had R. O. T. C’s., seven 
hundred and twenty-three colleges and universi- 
ties had them and in eight-three the training was 
compulsory. This, however, is only a béginning. 
A prominent army man at the conference for 
training and leadership in 1922, said that there 
were “at least 1200 secondary schools where 
junior units might be maintained.” He advocated 
raising the number of colleges with R. O. T: C’s. 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 5 














4 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


This shows where we are heading. The growth 
in numbers, the intensification of training itself, 
the aim at efficiency in training, are all the result 
of the recent war defense act which I favor 
amending. It is an educational mistake so pro- 
found in its import that I stand here to sound 
a warning against it. Militarized Europe has 
never been so insane as to invade its schools 
with such a military program. It is viewed by 
military men as the best possible substitute for 
conscription; it is supported most fervently by 
those Americans who would favor conscription 
if the American people would stand for it. 

Military training in schools is justified if it 
helps to provide a good education. I deny this 
possibility. Prominent in the characteristics of 
personality are the qualities of initiative, crea- 
tivity, imagination, self-control, moral strength. 
Where, I ask you, have educational authorities 
used military training in order to assure our 
boys such qualities? If military training were 
needed to develop these qualities, the schools 
of the world would many years ago have intro- 
duced military training into their courses of 
study. Initiative is more than prompt response, 
though it includes this Jatter quality. But it is 
one thing to learn quickly to respond to a sug- 
gestion and another thing to learn how to suggest 
to oneself, to start something rather than be 
started. I do not deny that there are times 
when some must give orders and others must 
obey; my point is that education is primarily 
interested in self-command, in creating those who 
can lead and suggest, who start themselves. 
Creativity and imagination are true tests of an 
educated man—that is quite the opposite of the 
desideratum in military drill where the best sol- 
dier, so far as tactics go, is the man who can 
rid himself of his own ideas and be the passive 
recipient of ideas. I do not deny the necessity, 
in times of war, of the docile, obedient, unim- 
aginative type—my point is that education aims 
at quite the opposite. 

And self-control—there is only one way to 
learn self-control and that is by a moral disci- 
pline, by a development of a justice and truth- 
fulness, by the building up of a code of honor, 
and by the-winning of self to a recognition of 
the truth of such moral qualities. It is the life 
developed in freedom—that is why democracy 
is the most stable of societies, why England 
goes through its profound social changes without 


bloodshed, whereas Bourbon and Romanoff ab- 
solutism are overthrown only by violence which 
sweeps old foundations away with rivers of 
blood. 

Military training fails even in giving the best 
physical. training. If this statement were not 
true, schools and colleges would long ago have 
devoted their energies to the development of a 
military. system of physical training. There isn’t 
a military college which depends upon its mili- 
tary methods to enhance the physical well-being 
of its men. Instead of physical training being 


helped by military training, military training’ 


everywhere employs the accepted physical 
methods which obtain in all standard schools to 
help its men. Athletics teach self-reliance, the 
ability to bear pain, the sense of honor, the 
quality of restraint and sacrifice far better than 
military drill, and, to meet the ordinary problems 
of civilized life, the trained athlete in school or 
college has a far better preparation than has the 
soldier. 

What I have said about the failure of military 
training to give good education is particularly true 
of boys in high school. It cannot be shown that 
sixty-three high schools in nearly half of which 
military training is compulsory, have in any way 
produced a superior training educationally to that 
produced by the high schools which have no 
military drill at all. Their athletic teams win no 
more victories, their class-room work is no freer 
from cheating, their students do, no better work 
in college or in the world. And on the other 
hand, while it is dangerous to quote authorities, 
many are the educators who discount the edu- 
cational value of teaching high school boys the 
art of war. Commissioner Claxton, once United 
States Commissioner of Education, said, “J do 
not believe military drill in our public schools is 
the best means; rifle practice in the schools ts 
undesirable.” 

Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the Uni- 
versity of California, favoring the Switzerland 
universal military service, says, “No place in th 
scheme for the drilling of school boys.” 

Arthur Hadley of Yale, in favor of summef 
camps, says, “Military training of young men of 
high school age should be of the kind given i 
Switzerland—training in gymnastics, movements 
of large bodies, in hygienics of camp life, lessons 
in the actual use of the arms should be postponed 
until a later period.” 





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were at Mast i240 SCCONCaTY SCnOOIsS Where 
junior units might be maintained.” He advocated 
raising the number of colleges with R. O. T: C’s. 


= SWE Cale CLUES SS @lid ULLIVCISILICS Wiiicti, vCc- 
fore that act, had been functioning without this 
military department. 






THE AMERICAN TEACHER 5 





SOR OO OS ee ae 


a i a 


Charles Eliot of Harvard, says, “Military drill 
Is not a good form of physical exercise for boys 
between fourteen and eighteen; training in the 
real work of soldiers should not begin before 
the twentieth year.” 

George Ehler, director of physical education, 
University of Wisconsin, says, “Let us not con- 
found military drill with training nor substitute 
military drill for physical education.” 

Yet, unless the defense act is changed, the 
process of militarizing our high schools will go 
on, and the corridors of our high schools will 
increasingly bristle with army rifles. 

In college the military drill has not been re- 
garded as in any wise a substitute for physical 
training. If it were you would not be witness- 
ing the great expansion of athletics and physical 
training in all our schools and colleges. Colleges 
and universities where military training is com- 
pulsory are compelled to provide increasingly 
other opportunities for physical exercises; for 
these schools the military drill is an added load. 

I stress this point because so often our mili- 
tary friends plead for the introduction of mili- 
tary training into our schools because, to use 
the words of the Junior R. O. T. C. Manual, 
“the purpose of this book is not to make soldiers 
out of your boys, but to develop ‘them physically, 
morally and mentally into the best type of citi- 
zens.” J deny that military training is the best 
way of obtaining these things—educational his- 
tory: is against it. The argument cannot be 
supported by evidence. On the other hand it is 
an educational axiom that qualities of citizenship 
in a democracy can best be learned in a democ- 
racy, and that the qualities of creativity can only 
be learned by the mental and moral discipline of 
a genuine school life. 

The reason why military education is not the 
best education is because its objective is not the 
training of men to live but the training of men 
to be soldiers. I am not denying that there have 
been times when men had to be trained as sol- 
diers; what I am claiming is that schools are 
not the places to train soldiers. Schools are 


places where men are developed for the living 
of the best lives possible, and you cannot have 
the best education where training for life is a 
by-product and the training to be a soldier is 
Primary. 

As a matter of fact, the real aim of the R. O. 
T. C. in our schools is primarily the making of 


soldiers. This is the second possible justification 
for having military training in our schools— 
that it‘is for the purpose of promoting our mili- 
tary defense. 





LETTER FROM FREDERICK J. LIBBY 


Executive Secretary, National Council for 
Prevention of War 

The relations between our Government and 
the Mexican Government are causing grave con- 
cern in the best informed circles in Washington. 
Even the newspaper men regard the situation as 
extremely delicate. 

The oil interests, which have been the occasion 
of the long continued dispute, are being en- 
couraged by our State Department to refuse to 
accept the Mexican oil laws. 

A second occasion of ill-feeling is the religious 
controversy in Mexico. 

Again, there is the cry of “Bolshevism.” 
A careful study of the Mexican Constitution and 
laws will reveal the fact that Mexico is not re- 
motely communistic and her extreme nationalism 
makes the charge that the Third International is 
directing her policy grotesque. Her laws re- 
garding mineral and oil lands, while they may ap- 
pear to our administration as a form of socialism 
are as a matter of fact based upon the old Roman 
law and are similar to the laws now in effect in . 
France, Italy, Spain and other Latin countries. 
The United States cannot under any interpreta- 
tion of the convenient Monroe Doctrine assume 
the right of determining what form of government 
other nations shall have. We did not claim 
that right regarding Russia but have expressly 
abjured it. : 

In the fourth place, there is the conflict of 
interests between ourselves and Mexico in Central 
America. Our State Department has seen fit to 
recognize one claimant to the Presidency of 
Nicaragua, Diaz. The Mexicans have recognized 
the elected Vice-President Sacasa, as successor 
to the presidency. Sacasa is the Liberal leader ; 
Diaz the Conservative leader. The result is that 
the cry of a “Mexican-fostered Bolshevik hege- 
mony intervening between the United States and 
the Panama Canal” has been raised under the 
influence of our State Department and bids fair 
to be a strong contributing factor in the growing 
ill-will between our two governments. 

We believe that the position taken at Mrs. 
Catt’s Conference on the Cause and Cure of 





6 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


War on the basis of a considerable knowledge 
of the facts was eminently wise: That the mat- 
ters in dispute should be settled without resort 
to such unfriendly measures as severing diplo- 
matic relations and particularly the lifting of 
the embargo on the export of arms, which would 
encourage revolution in Mexico; and that if 
diplomacy has utterly failed, as it seems to have 
failed, the matters in dispute between our govern- 
ments be submitted to arbitration, Since neither 
country is a member of the World Court and 
since both are members of the Hague Tribunal, 
it would not be unreasonable to suggest that 
under a treaty of peace which goes back to 1848 
and is still in force we should suggest to Mexico 
that our differences be arbitrated by the Hague 
Tribunal. 

We try never to ask you to send a letter or 
telegram to the President unless we are sure that 
the situation requires it and that it will serve an 
especially important purpose. We do ask you 
to write or wire the President on this issue the 
day you receive this. Please put the situation 
before others and ask them to do likewise. 
Churches and ‘other bodies should send resolu- 
tions but no time should be lost. We would 
suggest that a telegram is more effective than a 
letter. 

You will recall the fact that the president has 
power to break off diplomatic relations or lift the 
embargo on the export of arms without action of 
the senate. Therefore, your communication 
should be with the president. At the same time, 
we cannot forbear reminding you of the impor- 
tance in relation to our foreign policy of the 
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Com- 
mittee, Hon. William E. Borah. If you briefly 
notify him and your own two Senators also of 
your will in this vital issue, you will be doing 
well. 

The time to prevent serious trouble with 
Mexico is now. 





The Steamship Ryndam, Holland-American line, 
sailed September 18, for the long-projected voyage of 
eight months, with 450 college men and 50 faculty 
instructors, for a voyage in the interests of interna- 
tional education. The purpose is to develop the ability 
to think in world terms, to interest students in foreign 
affairs, and to strengthen international understanding 
and good will through first-hand contacts with places. 
people, problems and leaders of thought and action in 
many national centers. 


DO YOU WANT ANOTHER WAR? 


Great Britain spends $12.96 per capita each year 
on armaments. France spends $6.43. The United 
States, $4.94. Italy, $3.86. Japan, $3.68. Germany, 
$1.70. Russia, $1.45. So say the reports. 

Britain’s big expenditures are largely naval. She 
has a small homeland and lives by commerce, g0 
she thinks she must rule the waves. 

The per capita method of figuring is apt to be 
deceptive. On account of the large population of the 
United States, it makes our armament expenditures 
appear lower than those of England and France, 
whereas they are higher. They look lower because 
they are spread over more people. Also, instead of 
being just a little higher than those of Japan, they 
are tremendously higher. 

And Uncle Sam has not the same excuse for huge 
armaments that some other countries have. He has 
a vast area and is almost self-sufficient. If all the 
rest of the world were to sink into the sea he could 
get along. 

The amount is made to look small, also, because 
it includes only the actual amounts expended on 
military, naval and aerial budgets, and does not in- 
clude the colossal sums being paid on past wars. If 
the iatter were included, the amount per capita would 
be several times as much. 

The United States, for example, spends over four 
billions of dollars per annum. Most of this immense 
sum goes, in various ways, for past and future wars. 
It is difficult to divide the appropriations accurately 
and to discover precisely what proportion goes for 
these purposes. Some have said 85 per cent. It 
could be less than that, and still be about $30 pet 
capita, or far above $100 per family, each year. 

Do you want another war? If not, what are you 
doing day by day to help build a peace psychology 
that will be effective when the propaganda mills of 
the masters again get busy?—Labor World, Duluth. 


MUST BEGIN IN THE SCHOOLS 


All movements that succeed start in the schools. It 
is in the schools of the world that the peace movement 
will succeed or fail. If the old-style militant national- 
ism continues to be taught there—the arrogance, the 
hate of past days—there is no hope. 

Hate is being taught now in the schools of every 
land and not infrequently under the guise of patriot- 
ism. For myself, I learned to love France and to hate 
England, as a schoolboy, through the lessons of the 
Revolutionary War. These lessons could have been 
taught without breeding hate, I think; but they were 
not. 

South and North have not yet agreed on a history of 
the United States. - Both are handing down from get 
eration to generation the animosities of the Civil War, 
by using different text books with utterly different 
viewpoints. They call this loyalty. It is loyalty to the 
past. Loyalty to the future demands that the glorifica- 
tion of war with its hatreds shall cease—From What 
Price Peace, by Frederick J. Libby. 





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The R. O. T. C. in High School | 


R. E. Blount, Chicago Federation of Men 
Teachers - 


What is the motive for all the war prepara- 
tion, the hundreds of millions spent for armored 
ships, for fortifications, for munitions, and for 
supporting young men in non-productive occupa- 
tion and training them in the art of killing their 
fellows? Is it fear? People do the most absurd 
things under the influence of fear. Do we fear 
Canada, beside whom with an _ unprotected 
boundary we have lived in most cordial rela- 
tions for many years? Do. we fear Mexico, 
whom our highest officials, presumably at the 
behest of their financial masters, have threatened 
and abused in the most outrageous manner, strug- 
gling Mexico who is hardly able to stand on her 
feet after the throes of revolution? Do we fear 
Japan, plucky as she is but without resources of 
metals, fuel or adequate food? Do we fear that 
the Chinese will load their millions, without arms 
or munitions, on their sampans and house boats 
and devastate our Pacific shores? Do we fear 


that any European nation, bankrupt and desper- 
ately wounded in the great conflict it so recently 


experienced, has a thought of attacking us? 

Is it profits we are seeking by our war-like 
gestures? Those who sell munitions and other 
supplies to our army and navy at exorbitant 
prices are among the most determined advocates 
of preparation for military “defense.” Our 
financiers who’ invest millions in our weaker 
neighboring states—Nicaragua, Haiti, San Do- 
mingo, Cuba, and others—find the complaisant 
administration at Washington ready to use U. S. 
armed forces, at public expense, to domineer over 
feeble governments and protesting peoples to in- 
sure generous returns to our beneficent specu- 
lators. If we are to continue the policy of force- 
ful exploitation of our needy neighbors we shall 
probably require strong armed forces and ruth- 
less officers to command them. The vociferous 
patrioteer talks loudly about protecting our prop- 
erty invested in foreign lands. It would be hu- 
morous if it were not so tragic. We who supply 
the young lives risked or lost in the campaign and 
pay the bill have no property at stake. Legitimate 
investments are not endangered. Concessions and 
holdings to the detriment of the people, obtained 
through bribery of corrupt officials, are some- 
times threatened. Must we spend the lives of 


our young men and our public funds to protect 

our unscrupulous speculators? 
' Is our war preparation due to pessimism and 
shrewd calculation? Pessimists say it is folly 
to think there will be no more war. When war 
comes, perhaps through the fault of other nations, 
we shall be drawn into it, just as we were in 
1917. If we have adequate preparation we shall 
be, able to act more promptly and suffer less 
than we should suffer if we were not equipped. 

Whatever the motive, we are preparing for 
war. While disclaiming hostile feeling for any 
of our neighbors and protesting that we seek 
peace we are impregnating the minds of the 
people with the thought that military force is 
necessary and we are accumulating weapons and 
munitions and training young men to use them. 
What part does the R. O. T. C. in the high 
school play in this program? 

In 1918 when the whole country was war mad 
the thought quickly spread that our older high 
school boys should receive military training, so 
that when their turn came to serve their country 
there would not be the long months of delay in 
preparing them for the field. Many high schools 
organized such training, usually under the super- 
vision of a man detailed from the U. S. army, 
often a soldier returned from France. At first 
it was only the older boys who underwent this 
training. After a year or two the country re- 
covered in some degree its sanity. The training 
lost something of its glamor. Many schools 
discontinued the work,entirely. In others the 
number of boys volunteering for the training, 
even under more or less pressure from the school 
authorities, fell off so that many units were dis- 
continued and others were kept going only by 
strenuous recruiting. All sorts of inducements 
were made to get the boys to join. Young boys 
just entering high school were urged to sign the 
roster. Uniforms were supplied free. The free 
use of a suit of clothes worn all day, especially 
if it seems to carry with it some distinction, is 
quite an inducement to a poor boy. Military 
drill gives credit toward graduation without book 
study. To the older boys there is the opportunity 

fad 
of -becoming an officer with its privilege of dom- 
ineering over the little fellows, provided there 


7 





8 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


are enough recruits to fill the ranks. So the 
upper class boys who are in the game are eager 
to enlist the “freshies.” 

In 1925 military training was given in sixty- 
three high schools in the United States. In most 
of these the work was voluntary. The list in- 
cludes a few large cities—Chicago, Cleveland, 
Kansas City—and many cities of 20,000 to 100,- 
000 inhabitants. This work is undertaken on the 
pretext that it will promote in the boys good 
citizenship, physical training, and military in- 
struction and training. As to citizenship, prac- 
tically nothing is done, no instruction, no direc- 
tion in concrete duties. As to physical training, 
the R. O. T. C. commonly takes the place of 
superior gymnasium exercises. The overwhelm- 
ing consensus of opinion of physical training in- 
structors as well as of other teachers is that such 
military training as we have in our schools lacks 
the desirable features of physical exercise and 
has no place in high school. The boys march and 
go through the manual of arms. The movements 
are stiff, the guns too heavy for the smaller boys. 
The boys probably receive very little physical 
harm from the drill since it lasts only a short 
period two or three times a week. As to pre- 
paring the boys to become officers when their 
country calls them to the field of war, it is to 
laugh. The most able boys who would really 
make good officers are not beguiled by the mili- 
tary camouflage. All the arts of war the boys 
learn in their two or three years of high school 
drilling could be taught real soldiers in training 
in as many weeks. If anyone thinks the boys 
learn obedience and devotion to duty in their 
school playing at war he has another think com- 
ing. Some of the banties take themselves quite 
seriously for a little while and strut about with 
their big guns very pompously. But they soon 
drop that manner and become natural boys again, 
careless, taking their job very easily. As to 
military discipline, there isn’t any. There cannot 
be any drastic enforcement of discipline as there 
is in the regular service, and few of the non- 
commissioned officers who have charge of the 
boys are fitted by education or native ability for 
leaders of boys. They do not know how to ap- 
peal to their charges and inspire them to worth- 
while things. At times when a competitive drill 
is on, the boys show some enthusiasm, even com- 
ing out for extra training. But this is only a 
spurt and is suon over. 


The one effective result of this high school 
military game is to make the idea of war popular, 
And that, I take it, is the reason the army officers 
and their civilian supporters promote the thing. 
The guns the boys carry were made for shooting 
men. The boys know it and think it. The more 
they think it the more they take official killing 
as a matter of course, and the more sympathetic 
they are with organized killers. When they be- 
come men they will be likely to join the throng 
who clamor for a large appropriation for the 
army and navy. The R. O. T. C. is good propa- 
ganda. 

Even Germany in her truculent militant days 
before 1914 was not so foolish as to offer her 
school children on the altar to Mars. We dep- 
recate the publication of the revolting details of 
murder in the daily papers. It puts images of 
crime into the minds of our young people. Yet 
week after week we ask the boys to shoulder 
guns and imagine themselves killing their fellow 
men. John Dewey says that military training 
“is undemocratic, barbaric, and educationally 
wholly unwise.” Progressive teachers agree 
with him. 

For 1925, congress appropriated $3,800,000 for 
R. O. T. C. work in high schools and colleges, 
most of it for military training in college. The 
entire appropriation for current military activ- 
ties amount to hundreds of millions. Let teachers 
compare this with the sum appropriated for edu- 
cation. The bill which the A. M. A. is hoping 
to get through congress providing for a Depart- 
ment of Education in place of a bureau in the 
Interior Department very timidly asks for a half 
million dollars to finance it. For the R. O. T. C. 
nearly four million and for the whole proposed 
Department of Education a miserable half mil- 
lion! Great is Mars! 

The thing to do is bravely to demand peace. 
Outlaw war. Stop teaching war. Stop prepar- 
ing for it. Stop paying for it. Teach peace. 
Spend millions of dollars for it. Send young 
men and young women to foreign countries t0 
make friends; bring foreigners here to make 
friends. Make friends in every part of the world 
by the thousands. Declare frankly that we shall 
not send war vessels and troops to foreign 
countries to collect the claims of our speculators. 
Proclaim to the whole world that we will respect 
others’ rights and liberties as we ask them 1 
respect ours. We will forcibly exploit no one. 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Make treaties with every country on the earth 
agreeing to arbitrate all questions which we can- 
not settle by conference. If we work for peace 
with half the vigor we use in war promotion 
and spend on it one tenth the money wasted in 
war expenses there can be no more war. And in- 
cidentally crime, which is so largely an aftermath 
of war, will diminish, and there will be meaning 
in the words “good will to men.” 





POISON GAS PROTOCOL 

(Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of 
Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bac- 
teriological Methods of Warfare.) 

1. Purpose 

To eliminate the use of poison gas and bacteriologi- 
cal methods of warfare as between the parties which 
have ratified this treaty, to the end that this proinbition 
shall be universally accepted as international law. 

2. History 

One of the treaties adopted at the Washington Con- 
ference included a treaty for the abolition of chemical 
warfare and control of submarines. It was not ratified 
by France, who objected to the submarine provisions, 
and, therefore, never came into effect. This treaty, 
almost identical with the Washington treaty save for 
the elimination of submarine provisions and the addi- 
tion of application to bacteriological methods of war- 
fare, was negotiated at the Traffic in Arms Conference, 
held in Geneva, June, 1925, at the instance and through 
the efforts of Theodore Burton, official representative 
of the United States. It was signed by 44 countries, 
and was transmitted by the State Department to the 
Senate for ratification. 

3. Legislative Status 

On June 9, 1926, it was favorably reported to the 
Senate by the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator 
Borah has announced that he would make every effort 
for ratification. 

In reply to a letter from the Senator, General Persh- 
ing made the following reply: 


When the opportunity came at the Washington Con- 
ference to give expression to my views, it was done 
without hesitation. As chairman of the subcommittee, 
I proposed the following resolution, which was adopted 
unanimously: 

Chemical warfare should be abolished amon 
as abhorrent to civilization. It is cruel, unfair, and 
improper use of science. It is fraught with the gravest 
danger to noncombatants and demoralizes the better 
instincts of humanity.” 

I can not think it possible that our country should 
fail to ratify the protocol which includes this or a 
similar provision. Scientific research may discover a 
8as so deadly that it will produce instant death. To 
Sanction the use of gas in any form would be to open 
the way for the use of the most deadly gases and the 
possible poisoning of whole populations of noncom- 

atant men, women, and children. The contemplation 
oe such a result is shocking to the senses, It is un- 

nkable that civilization should deliberately decide 
upon such a course. 


nations 


Sincerely dan" 
JOHN J. PERSHING. 


Ratification of this treaty has been strongly opposed 
by Several interests which, fighting under cover, are 
said to represent chemical and airplane manufacturers. 
It is opposed also by representatives of the Veterans of 
Foreign Wars and Reserve Officers’ Association. 


. 


9 


Opposition coming from the American Legion is 
headed by the General Fries who tried to have a 
Washington teacher discharged because he entered a 
contest based on making definitions of socialism. 

By some of these opponents the arguments used play 
up the usual fear and prejudice against other nations 
and attempt to identify this treaty with the League of 
Nations, ignoring United States initiative and misrep- 
resenting the purpose and scope of the treaty. 

There is a. feeling that this opposition, seeming to 
represent the opinion of foreign war veterans, does not 
really represent the opinion of the rank and file of the 
men themselves. The bill has been sent back to com- 
mittee and an effort is being made to get a very wide 
expression of opinion on the use of poison gas. 

Prompt action in support of this treaty is necessary 
on \the part of organizations already, on record for the 
limitation of armaments. All locals are urged to take 
action on this specific treaty, the Poison Gas Protocol, 
advocated by the state department and the foreign rela- 
tions committee. Please send a copy of the resolution 
to the A. F. T. office and to the National Council for 
the Prevention of War, Washington, D. C. Friends of 
the treaty are now writing letters to their senators and 
to Senator Borah, Chairman of the Foreign Relations 
Committee. 


EXCERPTS FROM SPEECH OF JOHN 
NEVINS SAYRE 


Before the Late Convention of the American 
Federation of Teachers 

-Mr. H. G. Wells says: “We have a race be- 
tween education and catastrophe. There are 
forces at work in our world for peace and very, 
very potent forces in our world making for war.” 

In our country we spent over $600,000,000 
last year for the machinery for war. That is two 
and a half times what France spent; more than 
thirty times what Japan spent. We are spending 
a million and a half a day. 

What kind of education are we going in for? 
Consider the military training in public schools 
and colleges. In Ohio State University, for a 
period of about sixteen years down to 1916, there 
was one retired Army officer teaching the courses 
in military training there. Today that university 
has twenty-three active Army officers giving that 
instruction and in addition twenty-two enlisted 
men in the army helping with those courses; 
forty-five people, all told, in one institution on 
the payroll of the U. S. Department of War. 
The course is compulsory for freshmen and 
sophomore, and offers a bonus of about $200 a 
year if taken by juniors and seniors. The whole 
thing is under the control and auspices of the 


War Department. 











This situation is common throughout the 
country. In 205 of thé 281 institutions in which 
military training is given it is compulsory. _ 

Last year Congress appropriated more than 
ten and a half million dollars for R. O. T. C. 
work, 

In recent years, several professors and students 
in colleges who have protested against the com- 
pulsory feature have been compelled to leave the 
colleges. Thus it is seen that military training 
has a decided tendency to suppress freedom of 
conscience and of discussion. 

Moreover, college presidents are influenced to 
adopt military training through the financial aid 


given by the Morell Land Grant Act to colleges . 


having military training. 

Again, military training, instead of being a 
preventive of war, will produce the very thing 
the military people claim it will prevent. Lord 
Grey, in his memoirs says: More than one true 
thing may be said about the cause of the war, 
but the statement that comprises most truth is 
that militarism and the armaments inseparable 
from it made war inevitable. Armaments were 
intended to produce a sense of security in each 
nation. What they really did was to produce 
fear in everybody. Fear causes suspicion and 
hatred. 

One of the most serious things about our new 
system of compulsory military training is that it 
has influenced Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Rus- 
sia to continue or increase cadet training. 

There is a bill before Congress now which 
would stop the use of federal officers and federal 
funds for compulsory military training in civil 
educational institutions. Among other delegates, 
one from the American Federation of Labor 
has appeared in support of this bill. 

A great many of the church bodies recently 
have been taking stands against compulsory and 
War Department military training in civil edu- 
cational institutions. If we work, everyone to- 
gether, in gathering the facts and getting those 
facts before the people of this country we can, I 
believe rally some old-fashioned Americanism and 
some old-fashioned common sense and drive this 
whole thing out of our public colleges and schools. 

Don’t you see that this dress parade version 
of military training is no good for preparedness, 
and it is no good for the kind of citizenship we 
try to train for in a democracy, for getting people 
to think, to settle complicated problems by proc- 





10 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 






esses of reasoning and conciliation, conference 
and thought, but it is good for leading youngsters 
into the war system, the war psychology, and the 
war ideas? 





FOR THE SCHOOLROOM 

To our office came the other day from the National 
Council for Prevention of War, a gift in the form of 
a unique calendar commemorating heroes of peace. 
Each page bears in a stenciled frame-work the por- 
trait of a benefactor of humanity, beginning with Pas- 
teur, followed by Lincoln, Columbus, Socrates and oth- 
ers. Below the portrait is a short biographical sketch, 
which gives to the Calendar of World Heroes a dis- 
tinctly educational value. 

The calendar was the outgrowth of competition for a 
prize of $1,200 offered for the twelve best essays on 
world heroes, the three essentials of heroism being 
nobility of character, fearless and self-sacrificing devo- 
tion to a great cause, and constructive work for 
humanity of a permanent character. 

Six of the prizes went to writers in the United 
States, and six to foreign countries. The twelve 
heroes who inspired the prize-winning essays are: those 
chosen for the calendar. 

The National Council for Prevention of War, 532 
Seventeenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C., would 
like to have one in every school. 

The American Federation of Teachers recognizes 
keenly the need for furthering the growth of an inter- 
national spirit of good will and how much this growth 
may be developed by breaking down the prejudices of 
school children. Much can be done certainly by this 
appeal to the admiration of all children for these world 
heroes who worked to give life to the world. The 
membership of the Federation will feel much satisfac- 
tion in recalling the resolution (the full text of which 
is given on p. 14) passed in the convention last: July 
asking the schools to glorify the heroes of peace. 


The strength of trade unionism in Mexico is shown 
by recent statistics given out by Richard Trevino, secre- 
tary of the Mexican Federation of Labor, generally 
known as “CROM.” This organization enrolls some 
2,000,000 organized industrial and farm workers. As 
the population of Mexico is less than 15,000,000, the 
labor movement in the United States would have to 
comprise 14,000,000 organized workers (instead of less 
than four million) to show a numerical strength com- 
parative with that of this so-called “backward” country. 

Is there any relation between the above and our 
Mexican political complication? 





The British Council of the World Alliance for Pro- 
moting International Friendship through the Churches 
has made arrangements for the interchange of visits 
between young people of different countries. Homes 
where young people will be welcomed have been found 
in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. 
Information can be obtained from Miss Olive Tritton, 
1 Arundel Street, Strand, London, W. C. 2. 














THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


The Seventh Annual Educational Conference 
sponsored by the Ohio State University will be held 
at that institution on April 7, 8 and 9, 1927. As in 
former years the general sessions will be held on Thurs- 
day evening, Friday evening and Saturday morning. 
Men of national note. such as Professor E. L. Thorn- 
dike of Teachers College, Columbia University, Pro- 
fessor Wallace W. Atwood of Clark University, Judge 
Olson of the Juvenile Court of Chicago, Payson Smith, 
Commissioner of Education for Massachusetts, and 
others will address the general sessions. 

Both forenoon and afternoon of Friday will be given 
over to sectional meetings of which this year there will 
be more than thirty. Here again specialists in their 
fields will contribute as. for example, Professor S. A. 
Courtis of Michigan in the Educational and Intelligence 
Test Section; Professor S. A. Leonard of Wisconsin 
in English; Professor Hill of Illinois in Non-biological 
Science, etc. 

The keynote of this year’s conference is “Expertness 
in Teaching” and the whole program, both general and 
sectional, will center around this idea. The uniform 
testimony of the thousands who have attended past con- 
ferences is that each year the conference is outstanding 
for its helpfulness, its abundance of ideas and its lack 
of mere talk. There is every reason to believe that this 
year’s program equals, if it does not exceed, all former 
ones. 


I look to the trade unions as the principal means 
for benefiting the condition of the working classes.— 
Prof. Thorold Rogers, University of Oxford. 








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TEACHERS MUST NOT THINK 


It is an old story for radicals to be called crazy by 
their enemies. It is a new thing to try to penalize radi- 
cals by actually trying to prove them psychopathic. If 
every non-conformist can be proved mentally unsound 
simply because he or she will not travel with the herd 
human progress is at an end and a new weapon of tyr- 
anny has been forged. This is precisely what Superin- 
tendent O’Shea and some of his associates seek to do in 
the New York schools. The superintendent himself let 
the cat out of the bag by announcing that many radi- 
cals “are considered by medical men of some eminence 
as psychopathic.” Some effort to apply this judgment 
to Miss Ruth Hardy, a brilliant and competent teacher, 
has been made. ‘ 

Miss Hardy is but one of three teachers who have 
been refused the promotions to which their examina- 
tions and record entitle them. The others are Dr. Jes- 
sie Wallace Hughan, a prominent Socialist, and Dr. 
Abraham Lefkowitz at one time active in the effort to 
form a farmer-labor party. Against neither of these 
teachers is there any charge whatsoever against theit 
activities in school. Their ability is admitted even by 
their enemies. They are penalized simply because, out 
of school hours they have dared to express their own 
opinions on politics and economics. Such control over 
education is far more dangerous than any control over 
the police which the bosses now exercise.—Union Labor 
Record, Wilmington, N. C. 


Trade unions are the bulwarks of modern democ- 
racies—W. E. Gladstone. 





12 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Academic Freedom and History Text Books 


The American Federation of Teachers is again the 
only nation-wide educational organization to interest 
itself actively in a question relating to academic free- 
dom which comes before the federal Congress. This 
time it was in connection with the Connery Bill which 
sought to go into the question of history text book 
writing. Our Washington representative appealed to 
the author of the bill and found him willing to hear 
our side. He accompanied her to the Chairman of the 
Committee on Education of the House and himself 
asked that the request of the American Federation of 
Teachers be granted, and that when hearings on this 
measure are held that the educator’s and the historian’s 
point of view on history text book content matter be 
presented, along with that of the military men. Mr. 
Reed, the Chairman agreed and held that because so 
many educators would probably be interested that the 
hearings be not held this year during the short session, 
but be postponed until full time can be given to them 
to present their views. 


Shortly after the decision to postpone hearings on 
this question had been reached, there appeared press 
reports that Colonel Dickinson, the Army Chaplain, is so 
anxious to have more military achievements discussed 
in our history textbooks that he appealed to the Mili- 
tary Affairs committee, asking them to grant a hearing. 
Again it was the American Federation of Teachers 
which alone took cognizance of this situation. 


Our representative had watched General Speaks of 
Ohio at the hearings on the Welsh Bill, on compulsory 
military training in our schools and colleges. It was 
then that Congressman Speaks, himself a man with 
military record, fought to get a fair deal for Dr. John 
Nevins Sayre, when some members of the Committee 
were most prejudiced against him. 

Because of this keen sense of fairness which General 
Speaks then displayed our representative appealed to 
him on this case. She asked him if he did not feel that 
a question on textbooks should be considered by the 
Committee on Education rather than by the Military 
Affairs Committee. He quite agreed and when Colonel 
Dickinson appeared before the committee on Military 
Affairs it was General Speaks, who had himself been 
under fire, a soldier from a line organization and not 
from the staff, who strongly differed with the Army 
Chaplain and who insisted that children should be 
taught about Leagues of Nations and International Tri- 
bunals and efforts for peace, to which the army chap- 
lain objected. It is General Speaks who assures the 
American Federation of Teachers that Colonel Dickin- 
‘son’s request will be referred to the committee on Edu- 
cation. And that committee will not hold hearings on 
the measure this year. 

In the meantime we are informing other educational 
organizations, asking them if they wish to be informed 
of the hearings and be present if they are held. 

The American Federation of Teachers, as the pion- 
eer, will lead and hopes the other interested organiza- 
tions will join. 


AN INVITATION TO THE TEACHING 
PROFESSION OF AMERICA 


The memory of John Henry Pestalozzi. one of the 
iilustrious sons of that modest. but very active repub- 
lic in the heart of turbulent Europe, Switzerland, is to 
be honored this year, the centenary of his death. The 
city and the state of his birth, Zurich, are co-operating 
in the preparation of elaborate plans. in which the edy- 
cational authorities, the University of Zurich, and other 
educational institutions will take leading parts. Special 
exercises, educational exhibits and conferences, to which 
foreign representatives have been invited, will mark 
February 1927 as a real “Pestalozzi Month.” 


For August Ist, 2nd and 3rd, a great International 
Educational Congress has been planned to which the 
teachers of Europe and America are invited. A Na- 
tional Advisory Committee for America has been or- 
ganized. consisting of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, 
President of Columbia University; Dr. J. J. Tigert, U. 
S. Commissioner of Education; Dr. Frank P. Graves, 
President of the University and Commissioner of Edu- 
cation of the state of New York; Dr. Lillian Stroeb, 
Professor, Vassar College. The Educational Directors 
of the branches. representing the various countries of 
Europe and America form an International Committee, 
the names of which will be published later. 


The organization of the work for the Zurich Con- 
vention, and the transmission of the official invitation to 
the American teaching profession have been placed in 
the hands of Dr. K. E. Richter, College of the City 
of New York, who in his capacity of Educational 
Director for the American Branch, will be glad to 
furnish any information concerning the educational con- 
gress. 

He is also closely co-operating with the authorities 
of Zurich to work out an interesting program for the 
three days of the convention, which will attract the 
teachers of Europe and America. During the -three 
days the mornings will be devoted to conferences, the 
afternoons to sight-seeing, the evenings to social func- 
tions such as a Venetian night on the Lake, a concert 
and dance, and finally a farewell dinner. Other attrac- 
tive features will be included in the program of the 
other cities, which will be visited. It is expected that 
the American teaching profession will be represented 
by a large contingent commensurate to the dignity, 
calibre, and numbers of the American teachers. 

The management of the tours through Europe and 
return has been entrusted to the Touring Department 
of the United American Lines, 28 Broadway, New 
York, thus assuring a comfortable and delightful 
journey. Information concerning the educational con- 
gress in Zurich will be furnished by the Educational 
Director (American Branch), Dr. K. E. Richter, Col- 
lege of the City of N. Y., Convent Ave. and 138th St 





Laborers must be recognized as being entitled to 48 
much consideration as employers, and their rights must 
be equally safeguarded—Commission on the Church 
and Social Service, Federal Council of the Churches of 
Christ in America. 








THE AMERICAN TEACHER 13 


WOMEN OF TODAY 


The International Book of the Day—5th Edition 1927 
“A Book of Ten Thousand Facts” 
Woman’s World Year Book Ida Clyde Clarke, Editor 


YOUR SCHOOL LIBRARY INCOMPLETE WITHOUT IT 
7——Bouquets on WOMEN OF TODAY== 


“Women of Today” of great value in my work 
at the University. —G. R. Hebard, University of 
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The Wall Street Woman’s Club wishes to go on 
record as being fully in accord with the work 
being done in bringing out the _ publication 
“Women of 1923.”"—Mary R. Frazer, Secretary. 





Please accept my compliments on the excellence 
of this valuable publication.—Dr. A. Z. Stangler, 
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“Women of 1923” is a pioneer work of which all 
women may be justly proud.—Thyraa W. Amos, 
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If “Women of 1923” is an annual publication, 
please enter our order for all subsequent editions. 
—C. L. Cannon, Chief of Acquisition Department, 
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“Women of 1923” has come—an astonishing 
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Women’s Clubs. 


Enclosed check for “Women of Today.” Re- 
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The American Teacher 


Democracy in Education Education for Democracy 
Published monthly, except July and August, by 
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 
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WAR AND EDUCATION 
Resolution Adopted by American Federation 
of Teachers’ Tenth Annual Convention, 
June 30, 1926 

Instead of scrapping educational machinery to 
meet pleas of economy, if such pleas are justi- 
fiable, economy should be undertaken by curtail- 
ing naval and military organization. The funds 
thus saved should be devoted to education, so as 
to make the children of America not only guard- 
ians of our revolutionary and constitutional 
heritage, but pioneers of a better social order— 
an order built not on special privilege or per- 
sonal gain, but on service for all. Not the de- 
velopment of robots, but the development of 
character and nobility of soul should be our goal. 
War not only militates against the development 
of the highest type of citizens, but is destructive 
of all that is best. It makes for the survival of 
the biologically unfit, for economic disorganiza- 
tion, for misery, chaos and for hatreds which 
make future wars inevitable. A single engine of 
destruction—such as a battleship and its auxili- 
aries—costs $70,000,000, enough to provide for 
the construction of 500 elaborate school build- 
ings, where 750,000 embryonic voters can have 
their potentialities for good developed to the ut- 
most. Can such criminal waste be permitted to 
continue without emphatic opposition? 

Those whose loved ones died in war and those 
who were called upon to pay in peace for the 
havoc wrought by war are determined to wage 


but one kind) of war—war to outlaw war and a 
campaign to eliminate social, economic and politi- 
cal injustice. Profiteers, munition makers and 
those who profit by war are making future wars 
inevitable. As the next war will be a war fought 
in the air and by means of deadly chemicals and 
disease germs or death rays, it may mean the pos- 
sible destruction of civilization. In the face of 
these facts the teachers and the organized 
workers of America cannot sit idly by without 
resisting to the utmost the machinations of the 
militarists and selfish materialists. We must 
meet propaganda for war with propaganda for 
peace. Our great task is to organize for peace 
by appealing to the hearts and minds of the 
growing manhood and womanhood of the nation 
intrusted to our care. Let the schools become 
the training ground for the warriors of peace 
and righteousness, and for political, social and 
economic justice. Then the goal longed for by 
the lovers of progress and mankind will surely 
be attained. 

To achieve the end so ardently desired by the 
lovers of peace, the schools must first root out 
those narrow ambitions and ancient animosities 
that haunt and dominate Europe and replace them 
with a desire for organized co-operation, which 
alone can develop an international mindedness 
without which no world machinery, however ad- 
mirable, can function. The American Federation 
of Teachers should seek to have the states enact 
legislation, or, better still, complete our plans 
for a world conference of educators with a view 
to reconstructing our text-books in literature in 
the social and natural sciences so as to eliminate 
national egoism, race hatred, the glorification of 
war, and the substitution therefore, of the teach- 
ing of the truth about war—its cold-blooded 
butchery, its elimination of the biologically fit, 
its economic chaos, its debts, starvation and dis- 
ease. We should glorify the heroes of peace 
rather than the heroes of war, heroes of peace 
as symbolized by the physician who risks all to 
discover the cure for leprosy or the idealist who 
holds fast to a minority view which will make for 
a better world and greater happiness for all. 
In our literary work we should stress not the 
“Charge of the Light Brigade’””or“Ulysses,” but 
rather Tolstoy’s “Ivan the Fool”; in our science, 
teachers should show that war is a_ biological 
menace, since it means the survival of the less 





THE AMERICAN TEACHER i 


fit, to propagate their kind. In our social sciences 
we should especially emphasize the fundamental 
causes of war. 

Second, we should work to secure the passage 
of an amendment to the Constitution -of the 
United States providing for a referendum on war 
except in case of a direct invasion of our terri- 
tory. 

Third, we should endeavor to have Congress 
enact legislation that would empower the presi- 
dent to work for the outlawry of war and the 
creation of an international tribunal for the set- 
tlement of such disputes as may arise on the 
principles of an international code to be de- 
veloped and codified. 

Fourth, we should support such measures and 
movements as seek to have the United States 
participate in international conferences called to 
consider reduction of armaments and such eco- 
nomic and social matters as are of vital concern 
to mankind to the end that imperialistic conflicts 
and the wars they produce may be forever ban- 
ished. 

Fifth, we should favor the enactment of legis- 
lation which shall insure the prompt publication 
of state department reports. 

Sixth, we should support measures, as the 
Welsh Bill, which seeks to prevent the use of 
government funds for the support of compulsory 
military training in public schools and colleges. 
We are opposed to the conscription of American 
manhood by educational institutions as tending to 
develop the military spirit. Compulsory military 
training, which is a’ poor substitute for physical 
training, is educationally unsound since it sub- 
stitutes automatic for rational reaction. What 
may be far worse, compulsory military training 
engenders an attitude of mind menacing to world 
peace because it recognizes war as a normal social 
phenomenon placing upon citizens the duty to par- 
ticipate in it. 

The outcome of the struggle between war and 
peace, upon which so much depends, rests largely 
with the schools and the colleges. It is therefore 
encouraging to the lovers of peace and brother- 
hood to find the young men of our colleges ob- 
jecting strongly to compulsory military training. 
The American Federation of Teachers hopes that 
this opposition to military training and especially, 
to the domination of such training by the De- 
partment of War with the resources and prestige 


of the government behind it, will grow until com- 
pulsory military training is completely wiped out 
of every educational institution. Only through 
such a victory will a peace mind-set gradually 
develop and help undermine and finally nullify 
the organized efforts being made to fix more 
firmly the war mind-set, which unfortunately still 
dominates mankind. 

Seventh, we should maintain direct and inti- 
mate relations with teachers of other nations 
through the World Federation of Educational 
Associations, bonafide trade unions, teacher and 
student exchanges. 





“THE CALL OF THE CAMPS” 


There comes to-our desk a beautifully printed an- 
nouncement of the Citizens’ Military Training Camps. 
It is copiously illustrated and skillfully planned. to 
make the training camps attractive to young men. All 
the sport featurés of the camps are played up—com- 
petitive games, music, movies. Adventures in new 
surroundings at the sea shore, in the mountains, are 
invitingly presented. There are Red Cross, Y. M. C. 
A., church services. and careful chaperonage to win the 
parents. And all free of charge, with transportation 
thrown in. (If you beg or steal your transportation 
the mileage allowance is pure gain.) ; 

To boys who spend their year in an office or shop 
or even in school the thought of four weeks in camp 
with a jolly crowd of fellows. out of doors. with good 
food and comfortable bed, under perfect hygiene con- 
ditions, is very alluring. Of course there are strict 
regulations to be observed and hours of stiff drill to 
be endured. But these are not made much of in the 
prospectus. 

In 1925 the government maintained twenty-eight such 
camps, in which about thirty-five thousand boys were 
trained. Gen. Pershing hopes the number will soon 
reach a hundred thousand. The expense to the govern- 
ment was over two'million dollars. To this must be 
added over a million dollars contributed by sympathetic 
wealthy citizens. For most of the great financiers of 
our country seem to think a trained military force 
desirable. Is it to assist them in putting down strikes 
or in collecting profits in some weak Central: American 
country? At any rate they support the camps and 
send chosen employees to them. 

The. camps claim to teach good citizenship and hy- 
giene and to give physical and military training. The 
program: made out by the war department provides in 
the first year for five hours in citizenship, five in hy- 
giene and first aid. ten in physical training, and ninety 
in military training. In the fourth year there is no 
time assigned to the first two items, ten hours to physi- 
cal and one hundred forty-eight to military training. 
Quite a preponderance of Mars! 

The boys admitted to the camps are of course all 
able bodied, over seventeen years of age, physically fit 
to be soldiers. They come back from the camps brown 





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16 : THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


and hearty, much improved by their life in the open. 
What a pity that the government does not maintain 
camps in which worthwhile occupations instead of war 
preparation should be the main business! Simply re- 
creational camps could be provided at about half the 
expense of the military camps. When we become 
wiser our Boards of Education may establish summer 
camps as part of our educational system, In them the 
children could study plant and animal life and get 
acquainted with the outdoors as they cannot in thecity. 
From them the pupils would observe farm and village 
life and do field work in geography. But what is the 
use of building castles in Spain? Such educational 
visions cannot be realized without money, and our 
Boards of Education must economize lest the rich have 
to pay more taxes. We can afford to spend only for 
that which yields profits or protects the investments 
we have made. 

One ‘straight speaking army officer has cried out 
against the whole miserable business: 

“Good citizenship,” he says, “is an excellent thing, 
and so are religion, filial affection and brotherly love. 
But they are not the ends of an army. An army exists 
to kill men, when ordered. in the nation’s quarrel, ir- 
respective of justice. It should train its men to that 
single end. If we object to any of our citizens thus 
specializing on murderous and unchristian activities; we 
should abolish the army. If we want an army. we 
should recognize it for what it is. We ‘should not lie 
about its being a school for citizenship or manual train- 
ing, nor clutter up its drill grounds with disciples for 
these irrelevant arts.” 





HOW WARS COME 

Earl Grey, of Falloden, in “Twenty-five Years” 

If there are armaments on one side, there must 
be armaments on the other sides.* * * The in- 
crease of armaments, that is intended in each 
nation to produce consciousness of strength and 
a sense of security, does not produce these effects. 
On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of 
the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. 

Fear begets suspicion and mistrust and evil 
imaginings of all sorts, till each government feels 
it would be criminal and a betrayal of its country 
not to take every precaution, while every gov- 
ernment regards every precaution of every other 
government as evidence of hostile intent. * * * 
The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, 
the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them 
—it was these that made war inevitable. 

This seems to me to be the truest reading of 
history, and the lesson that the present should 
be learning from the past in the interest of future 


peace. 


CHILD LABOR INCREASES 


The United States Children’s Bureau reports that 
child labor in industry is on the increase throughout 
the country. 


This information does not accord with predictions 
that agitation for the federal child labor amendment 
will result in improved state child labor laws. 

Instead, it again proves that profiteers in child labor 
cannot be trusted. It is all the same to them whether 
the federal government or the state checks them. They 
use different excuses, but they have one purpose. 

It remains for the people to decide whether a physi- 
cally stunted and an illiterate citizenry of the future 
justifies a continuance of present conditions. 

Congress attempted to debar the products of child 
labor from interstate commerce, but the Supreme Court 
said this was illegal. Lottery tickets can be debarred, 
but not a commodity that children make. 

Congress then attempted to tax the products of child 
labor, but again the Supreme Court interfered. The 
court had previously ruled that it is legal to tax state 
banks and oleomargarine out of existence. In these 
cases the court held that the intent of congress cannot 
be considered. It reversed itself in the child labor. case 
by holding that while the law claims it to be a tax bill, 
it is an attempt to accomplish another purpose. 

The child labor evil calls for insistent protest by 
every citizen who considers the welfare of future gen- 
erations and his country. 

Courts and profiteers have been known to bow to an 
intelligent public opinion. 











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THE AMERICAN TEACHER 17 


THE SECOND CONFERENCE ON THE CAUSE 
AND CURE OF WAR 


The Conference was remarkable for the large num- 
ber of experts who spoke on Arbitration, Security and 
Disarmament and the Foreign Policy of the, United 
States. It would be impossible because of the limita- 
tions of space to give any adequate idea of even the 
most important ideas put forward. Prof. James T. 
Shotwell spoke of the Protocol for the Pacific Settle- 
ment of International Disputes, which was the outcome 
of the Fifth Assembly of the League of Nations, as a 
turning point in human affairs. For the first time in 
history an alternative for war was sought openly and 
frankly. 

The next milestone on the road to peace was the 
Treaty of Locarno and six associated treaties which 
went into effect upon the entry of Germany into the 
League of Nations during the Seventh Assembly last 
September. According to these treaties Germany and 
each of her neighbors, France, Belgium, Poland and 
Czecho-Slovakia, will submit all their legal disputes to 
the Permanent Court of International Justice or to 
arbitration. But the dangerous - disputes between 
nations are the political disputes—disputes which con- 
cern the vital interest or national honor of a nation. 
These are the incidents about which wars arise. They 
are not often matters which can be brought before a 
court or submitted to arbitration. 

In the Treaties of Locarno disputes of this kind are 
referred to Commissions of Conciliation. Treaties of 
peace in the past have announced the high resolve to 
maintain peace and friendship in the future, but the 
significant thing in the Locarno Treaties is this definite 
provision for Commissions of Conciliation for political 
issues, Commissions which are in existence at the pres- 
ent time. And it was because there was this definite 
machinery and a limited responsibility that the British 
Government was able to say that it would guarantee 
the peace between France and Germany and come to 
the help of the victim in case of aggression by the 
other. 

Prof. Shotwell spoke again of the necessity of revis- 
ing the law of neutrality. Since Locarno, we are the 
potential accomplice of the aggressor unless we defi- 
nitely give up the traditional right of a neutral nation 
to sell and to ship arms and munitions to the belliger- 
ent nation which is the aggressor—the test of aggres- 
sion being an attack on another nation without first 
submitting the dispute to arbitration or, having done 
So, without accepting an arbitral reward. In the 
Locarno Treaty France and Germany accept this defi- 
nition of the aggressor. 

Prof. Shotwell asks for an American doctrine equal 
in dignity to the Monroe Doctrine. He thinks there 
should be a conference for the revision of the law of 
neutrality—a great international conference which will 
make aggressive war a crime. 

Norman Angell underlined what Mr. Shotwell had 
said about the necessity of revising the law of neutral- 
ity. He emphasized the fact that peace between indi- 
viduals is the result of long efforts, which gradually 


brought into existence our legal system and a police 
force—that is, an organized society. But internation- 
ally we have no organized society and there is the real 
cause of war. Our wars have not been wars in defense 
of our territory. What we have fought for in reality 
was the right to be a judge of our own interests. 
There is a violation of the first principle of organized 
society. A party to a case cannot be a judge of that 
case. We must have third-party judgment. He thinks 
we shall waste our efforts if we fail to support any ten- 
dency of the nations to transfer power from the indi- 
vidual nation to the community of nations. He thinks 
we must support this as an improvement—it is a step 
forward, which we must take. It is an attempt on the 
part of a combination of powers to secure third-party 
judgment. It is in reality the conversion of an army 
into a police force. ° 


The discussion on arbitration revealed that in this 
country our Presidents and the State Department have 
from time to time desired to extend the use of arbitra- 
tion. Their efforts have, however, generally been 
blocked by the Senate. The rank and file of the people 
of the United States do not realize this. The Senate’s 
attitude on arbitration is the real crux of the problem 
in this country. It requires only a one-third vote of 
the Senate to defeat a treaty with a foreign nation. 

The report of the Committee on Findings, when pub- 
lished, will be a brief but very interesting and irmpor- 
tant document. The addresses given at the Conference 
will also be published.—Bulletin, Illinois League of 
Women Voters. Lydia M. Schmidt. 





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Book Reviews 


“There is no international dispute that cannot be of war has prevented it. “Let us pick up the bludgeon 


solved in the council chamber. There is no international 
dispute that can be solved by war.”—Arthur Ponsonby 
in Now Is the Time. 

Now Is the Time, by Arthur Ponsonby, M. P. 
Thomas Seltzer, New York. 1926, 192 pp., $2.50. 

Here is the book that has awakened the trade unions 
of Britain to undertake the greatest crusade for world 
peace in the history of organized labor. As I write 
this, the last of a million signatures are being signed 
to the mammoth peace pledge—not a mere petition— 
drafted by the author of this book by which these Brit- 
ish workers solemnly covenant with each other and 
notify their government that they will never sanction 
or engage in another war. There are no ifs or buts 
about this Ponsonby peace pledge; it is an absolute 
undertaking by a million of the most thoughtful and 
influential trade unionists and liberals of Britain never 
under any circumstances to take part in another war. 

This may seem like strong gospel for many American 
workers. If so, read Now Is the Time. It is without 
exception the most important and forceful analysis of 
the criminal folly of war that has appeared since the 
great blood-letting of 1914-18. Its author knows what 
he is talking about. He was born and bred in the at- 
mosphere of British imperial diplomacy. As a lad he 
was a page to Queen Victoria. Later he served with 
distinction in a number of diplomatic positions before 
he finally awakened to a realization that the old diplo- 
macy and the governmental influences behind it are 
the: breeders of humanity’s greatest scourge—war. 
Then Ponsonby turned to the Labor Party as the one 
political organization with a real desire and program 
to end war, accepting the office of Under Secretary 
of State for foreign affairs in the cabinet of the first 
labor government. 

Now Is the Time is as convincing and unemotional 
as an alarm clock. With cold, forceful logic the book 
compels us to wake up and face the facts about the 
next war now in: the making. The great conspiracy 
for this next war is already in existence. Ponsonby 
reveals that at this very moment it is being promoted 
by those in high authority. The author lifts up the 
diplomatic curtain and shows us these forces at work. 
He also discloses what will happen when the next war 
comes and why it is necessary for governments to lie 
to their people about the real origin of war. 

“What the people imagine to be a spontaneous out- 
burst of indignation (against the other nation) is 
worked up, organized and prepared; the high-sounding 
motives for fighting given out publicly are deliberately 
faked and fictitious; the clamor they will find around 
them is false and hollow and much of the excitement 
is the work of a particular type of scoundrelism which 
war discovers, encourages and extols.” 

Ponsonby puts little trust in religious and humani- 
tarian arguments against war; they have been tried for 
centuries with precious little effect. Not even the eco- 
nomic argument of the colossal cost and wastefulness 


18 



















































of common sense,” Ponsonby counsels, “and as the 
chief foe is Humbug, it may turn out to be the best 
weapon.” Then follows the author’s staggering mass 
of evidence against the insanity of war; none of its 
alleged justifications is left with a leg to stand on 
Not the immorality, honor, cruelty or cost of war, but 
its sheer madness and futility is the crushing indict- 
ment against it. 
“The greatest tragedy of human life,” asserts Pon- 
sonby, “is that we are fighting the wrong foe. Inter- 
national war is a sham fight. The workers, who have 
to fight and pay in blood and taxes for all wars, never 
know the truth about the lack of reason for their sacri- 
fices. They always lose, no matter which group of 
warmakers may win But there is a real war awaiting 
our enlistment, a war in which labor has everything to 
gain and nothing to lose.” I would give all I possess 
if every worker in America might read and ponder 
Ponsonby’s call to action against labor’s real enemy. 
There is a far more dangerous enemy in our midst 
than any foreign army, however well equipped it may 
be. This enemy is the real enemy. The casualties it 
inflicts may be found in the slums, the workhouses, the 
asylums, the public houses, the prisons and the brothels 
up and down the country. The wounds to body, mind 
and soul are far worse than those inflicted by bullet 
and shrapnel. In infantile mortality, neglect of child 
life and squalid environment, this enemy reaches the 
youngest as sure as any bomb, not once in a way. but 
in season and out of season, all the time, The existence 
of squalor and poverty among our own people is a far 
greater national danger than the existence of ideas of 
which we disapprove in a foreign nation. Hopeless 
sodden degeneration is far worse than the loss of a 
limb because it is the loss of self-respect. 
This enemy with its staff poverty, ignorance, selfish- 
ness, greed, servitude and exploitation—operates without 
rest. and accomplishes its nefarious work before our 
very eyes. The sinews of war that might be used 
against it—money, men, youth, enterprise, genius and 
invention—have all been captured already by authority 
for the sham fight. The smallest success against this 
enemy would repay the nation a thousand fold. The 
greatest success against the supposed enemy in the 
sham fight gives the nation nothing. The whole nation 
co-operatiing together with the same encouragement 
and combined effort as in the war of massacre might 
work miracles; it requires just as much co-ordination, 
well thought out, scientific and drastic action. 
But the forces and weapons wanted are not forth 
coming. and the excuse that there is no money has 
damped down any serious attempt to deal with the 
dire social evils for which the real enemy is responsible. 
Until we can free people’s attention, enlist their services 
and demand their contributions toward a great cam- 
paign, there will be no change and evils will continue. 
There should be no peace against the real enemy and 
no pacifists. International war, be it remembered, not 





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only distracts the attention of the nations for the time 
it lasts. but by destroying a large part of the manhood 
of the nation, and impoverishing the whole country, it 
sears and scars our national life for generations to 
come. In fact, international war plays the game of the 
real enemy, aggravates his ravages, and deprives us of 
the weapons we want to use against him. 

Every tradition-bound reactionary Government quite 
emphatically does not want enduring peace, because it 
dreads the out-break of the real war. With interna- 
tional peace secured, the workers could properly turn 
their attention to a radical change in the cruel and un- 
just inequalities perpetuated by our social system. In- 
ternational war, therefore, is kept in reserve as a huge 
superior distraction by means of which the real war can 
be indefinitely postponed, and through which the 
workers in different countries can be. prevented from 
uniting their forces against the real enemy. 

NOW IS THE TIME to organize the workers of 
the world into absolute opposition to another interna- 
tional war and to enlist them in the real war against 
their common foes. Are the workers of America 
ready?>—The Locomotive Engineers Journal. 





War—Patriotism—P ace. by Leo Tolstoi. The Van- 
guard Press. Inc., New York, 1926. 124 pp., 50 cents. 

This little book comprises the principal writings and 
letters of Count Leo Tolstoi, the great Russian pacifist 
of the last generation, who prophesied the coming of the 
World War with the uncanny certainty of a man pos- 
sessed with acute spiritual insight. The first story in 
the book, “Neglect the Fire and You Cannot Put It 
Out.” is one of the best of Tolstoi’s short stories. The 
chapter on Christianity and Patriotism is just as true 
today as it was in 1894. Indeed, no other writer of 
which we know has so clearly and emphatically por- 
trayed the ghastly effects of what we often call pa- 
triotism as has Tolstoi, perhaps the greatest literary 
genius of the last generation. 

If you are a sincere Christian and yet believe that war 
is compatible with Christian ideals, by all means get 
this inexpensive volume of Tolstoi’s essays and absorb 
it to the last page. 





World Court 

The World Court, by George W. Wickersham 
Workers Education Pamphlet, Series No. 10. Workers 
Education Bureau Press. 1927. New York. 34 pages. 
Price, 25¢ postpaid. 

The World Court, a pamphlet by George W. Wicker- 
sham, former Attorney General of the United States 
and a leading authority on constitutional and inter- 
national law, is prepared especially for the Workers 
Education Bureau and designed to meet the needs of 
study groups and individuals. The pamphlet is dis- 
tinctive in that it is in no wise propaganda for Ameri- 
can action in respect to joining or staying out of the 
World Court. Rather it is a careful study and ex- 
Position of the facts attending the origin, development 
and accomplishments of the World Court. 

William Green, President of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor has written a preface for this pamphlet 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 19 


in a part of which he records labor's interest in this 
important matter as follows: 

“Organized labor has long been committed to inter- 
national peace as the only intelligent ideal for inter- 
national relations. We have special interests then in 
knowing the facts of the organization and work of the 
Court. This institution naturally becomes the center 
of our interest in international organizations and could 
well serve for our workers’ study groups as an ori- 
entation to the study of international relations.” 

—Workers’ Education News. 





Sourcebook on Civil Liberty Published 

“Civil Liberty,” a book compiled by Edith M. Phelps. 
tracing the history and development of civil liberties 
in the United States, will be published by the H. W. 
Wilson Company early in February. The book re- 
produces many documents on the subject, including 
clauses from state and national constitutions and laws, 
and many quotations and articles from thinkers, writers 
and statesmen. The reprints are grouped under the 
headings: History and Philosophy, The Law, The 
Courts, Communist and Fascist Views. Professor 
Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Professor of Law of Harvard 
University, has written an introduction. Orders for 
the book, $1.25 postpaid, may be sent to the American 
Civil Liberties Union, 100 Fifth Avenue, New York 
City. - 

Pierce, Bessie Louise. Public opinion and the teach- 
ing of history in the United States. New York, Al- 
fred A. Knopf. 1926. xi, 380 p. 8°. 

Much general attetttion has been drawn in recent 
years to the controversy regarding the character of 
history teaching and of history textbooks used in 
American educational institutions. This study pur- 
poses to give an historical account of some of the 
attempts to control the teaching of history in our public 
schools. It first traces the legislative control of this 
subject from colonial times on, culminating with the 
effect of the World War on this legislation and result- 
ing disloyalty charges against teachers. The activities 
of various propagandist agencies in attempting to con- 
trol history textbooks are next taken up.—School Life. 





4 

“Expenditures of State Universities and State Col- 
legés, 1924-25,” by Walter J. Greenleaf, Associate Spe- 
cialist in Land Grant Statistics. Issued by the Bureau 
of Education, Department of the Interior,.as Higher 
Education Circular No. 32. Price, 5 cents per copy. 
E 26-253. 

Data are collected and explained, origination from 
100 different institutions, relative to Salaries and Wages ; 
Materials, Supplies and other Outlays; Equipment; 
Lands, Buildings and Improvements; Total Outlays 
Excluding Trust Funds; Trust Funds. 

Refusal of the State Industrial Commissien to grant 
compensation to three Toledo school teachers was 
upheld Tuesday by the Ohio Supreme Court. 

These teachers were injured on the way to and from 
school. The teachers’ interests need protection. What 
is the answer? 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 91 





centuries with precious little effect. Not even the eco- 
nomic argument of the colossal cost and wastefulness 


1 


et ae ae 


There should be no peace against the real enemy ana 
no pacifists. International war, be it remembered, not 


8 








20 THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


Any sociologist will tell you that crime is prevented 
not so much by education as by continuing education. 
Reading is the born enemy of the gang. Any psy- 
chologist ‘will tell you that the quickest and surest way 
to assure continuing education is to develop the reading 
habit—James Weber Linn, Herald-Examiner. 





What Shall We Read? 

American Property Rights in Mexico, Further cor- 
respondence between the governments of the United 
States and Mexico in relation to the so-called land 
and petroleum laws of Mexico, supplementing the cor- 
respondence heretofore published as Senate document 
No. 96, 69th Congress, first session. Free. 





A study of individual differences 
(Thesis (Ph. D.)—University of 
1922. Offprinted from Psychological re- 
34-53 p. Lan- 


Kincaid, Margaret. 
in learning 
Minnesota, 
view, vol. 32, no. 1. January, 1925.). 
caster, Pa.. 1926. 


McLaughlin, Robert William. The spiritual element 
in history. 312 p. N. Y., Abingdon press, 1926. 





Washburne, Carleton. New schools in the old world; 
by Carleton Washburne in collaboration with Myron 
M. Stearns. New York, The John Day Company, 1926, 
xvi, 174 p. 12°. 

Doctor Washburne, superintendent of schools at 
Winnetka, IIl., here gives an account of a special tour 
made by him in England and on the Continent during 
which he inspected 2 dozen progressive schools scat- 


_ tered throughout Europe.—School Life. 





Maurice, Sir Frederick Barton. Governments and 
war; a study of the conduct of war. 171 p. London, 
Heinemann, 1926. x 





Sadler, William Samuel. How you can keep happy. 
292 p. Chicago, American Health Book Concern, 1926, 





Allard, Daniel. War 









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tio 


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Wiliam Green, President of the ‘american federa~ 
tion of Labor has written a preface for this pamphlet 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


A TRIBUTE 

Hedwig Hochbaum Hume entered into rest on 
Christmas Day. 

As first president of the Chicago Federation of 
Women High School Teachers and one of the 
founders of the American Federation of 
Teachers, she holds a unique place in the hearts 
of those pioneers in teachers’ unions. In their 
behalf is this tribute paid by one who, as a char- 
ter member of No. 3, worked beside Hedwig 
Hochbaum. 

Her leadership attracted and held that little 
band by rare personality and the magnetism of 
simple faith. Not by optimism, which knows that 
right will win; not by enthusiasm, which cham- 
pions right, defying all its enemies; but by simple 
faith, which espouses right—for better, for 
worse, whatever the event—and thenceforth fol- 
lows it with gentle, cheerful, fearless loyalty. 
The die is cast, once for all. Thereafter there is 
no turning back. Life may test her cruelly, but 
leaves her undismayed. And this same fidelity 
she expected in her associates in the Federation. 
Otherwise, why join: why, like her, espouse 
right? It goes without saying—yet we are proud 
to say it—that to her, then, there was no terror 
in Loeb rules, or raids on salary schedules and 
tenure, or other infringements of justice. The 
only thing was to follow right; and, “having 
done all, stand.” Yet she was never intolerant. 


Her years with the Federation were not many. 
Her marriage took her far away. But her radi- 
ant personality, her dauntless courage remain an 
inspiration to those who knew her, and who 
will remember her as 


“One in whom persuasion and belief 
Had ripened into faith, and faith become 
A passionate intuition.” 





There is not a wrong against which we fail to protest 
or seek to remedy; there is not a right to which any 
of our fellows are entitled which it is not our duty, 
mission and work and struggle to attain. So long as 
there shall remain a wrong unrighted or a right denied. 
there will be work for the labor movement to do.— 
Samuel Gompers. 


Trade unionism has passed the trial stage. It has 
come to its maturity out of long years of struggle and 
experience to an earned position of trust and confidence. 
The unions have built up standards of life and living. 
carefully, step by step.—William Green. 


eae Ca iLLLaLa4a.8 00 "@">""Y—s.... 


Sslivvul. 
is the answer? 


21 


A memorial service was held January 14 for 
Mr. Herbert Miller, the organizer of the Chicago 
Federation of Men Teachers, Local No. 2, A. F. 
of T., whose death occurred December 21, after 
several weeks of illness from heart disease. 


Mr. Herbert Miller was born in, Brantford, 
Conn., the son of Frederick and Susan Miller, 
the father an Episcopal clergyman. His college 
life began at Hobart College and was continued 
at Yale College. A student by nature, through- 
out life, he devoted himself to educational work. 
After teaching some years in his native state and 
in California, he entered the Chicago Schools, 
serving in the Marshal and Crane Technical High 
Schools until his retirement about eight years ago. 
At the time of death he was eighty years old. 


Most of the summer vacations were spent in 
travel, frequently in Europe, where he was fond 
of long walks, mountain-climbing and the study 
of the life of the people of a community. At 
one time he attended the University of Naples, 
its first American student. He appreciated music, 
and was a life-long devotee of history, philosophy 
and world affairs. 


As a teacher, Mr. Miller was interested in the 
activities and the welfare of teachers. An early 
member of the Chicago Teacher’s Federation, he 
aided in the development of a teachers’ pension 
system and was for several years secretary of 
its Board of Trustees. He was among the first 
teacher delegates to the Chicago Federation of 
Labor. In 1911 he organized the Chicago Feder- 
ation of Men Teachers by whom he is cherished 
as the founder. 





Whereas, Death has ‘taken from us our faithful 
founder and friend Mrs. Hedwig Hochbaum Hume, 
and 

Whereas, The Federation of Women High School 
Teachers owes its organization and in large measure 
its success during the first two years of its existence to 
her wise leadership and unselfish devotion, and 

Whereas, Her interest and helpfulness never were 
withdrawn but continued to the end, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the Federation of Women High 
School Teachers record its sincere appreciation of Mrs. 
Hume's distinguished services in behalf of their organ- 
ization and her devotion to the labor movement as 
a whole, and, be it further 

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be sent 
to her husband and family, also be made a part of the 
permanent record of the Federation of Women High 
School Teachers and published in The American 
Teacher and Federation News. 











OUR LOCALS 


There is a most gratifying growth in our locals. THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF 
Atlanta, Georgia, has the largest membership: in its his- TEACHERS 


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tory with an increase this month of 76. Washington, 
D. C., Teachers Union has increased 30%. A 10% 
increase in the national organization with hopeful pros- 
pects is the encouraging report. 


RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE TEACH- 
ERS UNION OF NEW YORK CITY ON THE 
RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES TO 
THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 


Whereas, production has beeen expanded at an un- 
precedented rate since the inauguration of the Indus- 
trial Revolution, and has been steadily advancing since 
because of public education, the application of engineer- 
ing to production and because of labor’s increased 
productivity; and 

Whereas, the industrial expansion made necessary by 
such increased production has been improperly used by 
exploiters to further the aids of economic imperialism 
popularly and properly nicknamed “dollar diplomacy” 
and, 

Whereas, American oil and mineral interests anxious 
to exploit the rich Mexican resources and other South 
American republics (often illegally acquired) to the 
detriment of the Mexican people and the peaceful re- 
lations that should exist between the nations of the 
western hemisphere at a time when the “spirit of 
Locarno” is dominating the diplomatic relations of the 
continental powers; therefore be it 

Resolved, that the Teachers’ Union is unalterably 
opposed to the tactics of Secretary of State Kellogg 
in supporting the unrestrained economic imperialism 
of our oil and banking interests in the territories of 
our southern neighbors regardless of the sovereign 
rights thus violated; and, be it further 

Resolved, That we call upon President Coolidge to 
accord to our southern neighbors the full control of 
their internal affairs without any interference by our 
State, Army or Navy Departments, and further that 
the acts of the State Department in its relations with 
the American republic be determined by that same un- 
selfish idealism and spirit of fair play which charac- 
terizes America in its dealings with the great European 
powers and further, that we give to these American 
republics the same friendly help and understanding that 
America gave when statesmen of the type of Clay and 
Webster guided our foreign relations. 

The Teachers’ Union has ordered copies of these 
resolutions to be sent to President Calvin Coolidge, 
Secretary Frank B. Kellogg, Senator William E. Borah, 
and President William Green of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. 





The teachers of Arkansas had as their sole rep- 
resentative in the annual convention of the Arkansas 
State Federation of Labor the week of Jan. 10 Alice 
Hanson, instructor of public speaking and literature at 
Commonwealth College. She represented Common- 
wealth Local 194 of the American Federation of 
Teachers. 


Memphis, Texn., and Atlanta, Ga., stand out pre- 
prominent in the progressiveness of their public school 
systems. Memphis is at the top of the ladder in Ten- 
nessee, and Atlanta occupies the same distinction in the 
state of Georgia. Memphis and Atlanta public school 
teachers are organized under the banner of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Teachers and are active in the affairs 
of the National Association. The per capita tax is 
smaller in Memphis and Atlanta than it is in Nashville, 
yet the salaries of the teachers range from 10 to 20 
per cent higher, and both Memphis and Atlanta have a 
better curriculum than Nashville. The compulsory 
school Iaw is enforced in Memphis by the regular em- 
ployment of eight attendance officers, while Nashville 
employs only one, and his “duties” are entirely foreign 
to the enforcement of the compulsory school law. 

The Atlanta Journal of Labor, one of the best edited 
labor journals in the entire country, has the following 
to say on the subject: 

“During our quarter of a century in Atlanta we have 
seen many organizations arise, many groups formed, 
many movements launched. These have ranged through- 
out the entire gamut of human activities—religious, 
fraternal, economic, social, business, recreational, etc. 
We have watched these with a keen interest, many of 
them with an intense personal solicitude. 

“Some have prospered, grown rapidly in size and 
increased steadily in influence, others not so prosperous. 
Some have served their group well and their city, too; 
others, neither. Some are alive and active today—a 
credit to their founders and their city; others, like the 
wind, have passed on, died of diseased objectives, lack 
of vision, devitalized leadership or plain dry rot. Some 
are standard bearers of progress; others, monuments 
of folly. 

“As we have seen these come and go few have at- 
tracted us as strongly as the organization of the public 
school teachers of the city. In our estimation few or- 
ganizations have assumed in so short a time the strength 
and force in city life that this organization has. Only 
a short time ago the teachers were just teachers. They 
kept school. And for the most part manifested the 
same qualities of meekness and subservience that they 
were expected to exact of their pupils. Outside the 
classroom they were to be seen but seldom—heard 
much less. 

“Now the Atlanta Teachers’ Association has brought 
a change. Its members are teachers still better than 
before, and citizens, too. They have come to the point 
where the term “fellow teacher” really means some- 
thing, and having accomplished that they have grown in 
self-respect, dignity, influence and public esteem. 

“This organization has recently chosen as its leader 
for the new year Mr. J. P. Barron, who seems not only 
to hold the confidence of the members of the local, but 
embodies as well the spirit of the organization, its 
purposes and its traditions. The teachers’ union is fac- 
ing a most active year, and Mr. Barréh gives promise 
of being an unusually active man.”—The Labor Ad- 
vocate, Nashville, Tenn. 


22 


res OW FT 48 ge aw a 

















The Teachers Union and the Teachers Union Auxil- 
iary have arranged a series of four Saturday dis- 
cussion luncheons on vital educational topics announced 
as “Fingers in the Educational Pie.” The first of these 
discussion luncheons, Mr. Walter Pollack, Chairman, 
was held Jan. 29 at the Civic Club. The topic for dis- 
cussion was School Teachers and Citizenship—what 
guarantee of citizenship can we offer the teacher? The 
speakers were S. Stanwood Menken, National Se- 
curity League, Dr. William P. Montague, Professor of 
Philosophy, Columbia University. 


The program for the succeeding meetings follows: 


Saturday, February 19 

Subject—Equal Pay for all Teachers—With Equal 
Preparation, Ability, and Experience. 

Speakers—Mr. William R. Lasher, President, High 
School Teachers’ Association; Prof. J. R. McGaughy, 
Head of the Department of Elementary Education, 
Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Chairman—Dr. Henry R. Linville, President, 
Teachers Union. 

Saturday, March 26 

the Board of Superintendents 


The 


Subject—Should be 
Abolished ? 

Speakers—Mr. I. Edwin Goldwasser, formerly District 
Superintendent, New York School System. Dr. Ed- 
ward B. Shallow, Associate Superintendent, New 

York School System. 

Chairman—Miss Ruth Gillette Hardy; Head ‘of De- 
partment of Civics and Economics, Girls Commercial 
High School. 

Saturday, April 30 

Subject—Are Educators a Brahmin. Class? 

Speakers—Mr. Royal J. Davis, Editorial Staff, New 
York Evening Post. Dr. David S. Muzzey, Profes- 
sor of History, Columbia University. 

Chairman—Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott, Teacher of Ethics, 
Ethical Culture School. 





The St. Paul Federation of Women Teachers believes 
that no condition of war, either declared or undeclared, 
should be permitted to exist among the nations of the 
American continents through failure to make use of 
any of the known peaceable methods of the settlement 
of international disputes. 

Therefore it urges that the misunderstanding be- 
tween the government of the United States and the 
governments of Mexico .and. Nicaragua be settled be- 
fore whatever international commission, court, com- 
mittee or agency shall be acceptable to the interested 
governments. 


The secretary is instructed to send a copy of this 
statement to President Coolidge, Secretary of State 
Kellogg, Senator Borah, Chairman of the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee, our representatives in 
the House and Senate of the Congress of the United 
States and to the Legislative Representative of the 
American Federation of Teachers in Washington. 

(Unanimously adopted at the regular January meet- 
ing.) 


THE AMERICAN TEACHER 


23 


The Federations of Women Teachers of St. 
Paul and Minneapolis, No. 28 and No. 59, 
Dorothy Gary, Chairman, Florence Rood, and 
Amy Edmunds, have been appointed the workers’ 
education committee by President Hall of the 
Minnesota State Federation of Labor. The en- 
tire movement is being carried out in accordance 
with the program of the A. F. of L. and of the 
State Federation of Labor. 


Since the free discussion of all questions of social 
and scientific interest is necessary to encourage that 
independence of thought and judgment upon which the 
strength of a democracy rests; and 

Since the attempt to control such discussion by legis- 
lative enactment may wholly discourage such free- 
dom of thought and judgment but also establish a 
dangerous precedent that may result in the complete 
control of the public schools by factional groups; be 
it 

Resolved, That the St. Paul Federation of Women 
Teachers is unalterably opposed to the passage of an 
Anti-Evolution Bill by the Legislature of the State of 
Minnesota; and be it further 

Resolved, That a copy of this resolution be sent to 
the legislature. 

(Unanimously adopted at the January meeting after 3 a 
full week’s notice of intention.) 


The Portland Teachers’ Union, Local No. 111, at the 
annual election chose the following officers: 

President. Hilma Anderson; vice-president, Maude 
Hill; recording secretary,, Laura Northrup; financial 
secretary, May Darling; organizer, E. E. Schwarztrau- 
ber; delegates to the Central Labor council, H. A. 
Director and Margaret Reid. 

These officers also constitute the executive committee 
which functions for the union between the semi-monthly 
meetings and which recommends the policies to be pur- 
sued by the union. 

The address at the last monthly luncheon by Mr. 
Norman C. Thorne,“ assistant superintendent of our 
schools, was well received and of interest to everyone 
‘present. It is fortunate for Portland’s city school 
system that it has a man in the superintendent’s office 
who so recently served his apprenticeship, first as 
teacher and then as principal of one of our high 
schools. It will take him some time, a long time it is 
hoped, before he loses the point of view of the class- 
room teacher. One can but ask whether it would nor 
be an excellent practice for all persons serving in 
supervisory capacity whether as principals or superin- 
tendents, to be required, say once in seven years, to 
take leave of absence to go back into the schools as 
classroom teachers. It is doubtful whether anyone can, 
however much he may desire it, retain indefinitely the 
attitude of, shall we say, employee. when the experiences 
of employee become submerged in those of employer. 
Mr. Thorne is confident he can maintain the proper 
balance. But can he? Could any of us? 











24 | THE AMERICAN TEACHER | M 


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