agriculture, and technical high schools and colleges, normal schools, and schools for various arts, trades, handicrafts, and occupations. The number and variety of courses within these schools are almost bewildering to contemplate. So great has been the effort to provide efficiency in some definite vocation that the dissection of courses has become almost humorous. I noticed only a short time ago twelve distinct college courses in poultry-raising. I also noticed that dairying had been divided into many courses, one of which was an entire course in ice-cream making. Vocational training is undoubtedly a good thing. The man without a regular vocation in which he is reasonably efficient is a dangerous man. The nation without industrial vigor and efficiency is a decadent nation. Germany glimpsed that idea and tried to forefend the deficiency. England is awakening to her impending dangerous industrial condition and is striving to remedy it through vocational and technical education. Every man ought to have a means of gaining a livelihood. Every nation must encourage the handicrafts, trade, and commerce, and seek efficiency in all of them. But are these all, and are they most fundamental? While Spencer is right in maintaining that utilitarian ends are fundamental in life's activities and therefore should be in education, must we not interpret anew the term "utilitarian"?

A great philosopher once characterized a university as a "place where nothing useful under the sun is taught." That definition does not aptly characterize a modern university. It is rather a "place where everything useful under the sun is taught." This is a grand conception if we properly interpret the word "useful." If we accept the definition of Sir William Hamilton that "everything is useful that is not useless," then according to that interpretation whatever contributes to human welfare or happiness is useful. The one who paints a great picture, composes or executes a great symphony, or pens a great poem, is no less useful to society than the one who builds a bridge, discovers a scientific formula, or harnesses steam and clectricity.

The ideal of "training for efficiency" in the gainful vocations is crowding out all other ideals, and its dominance means

danger. Efficiency in a gainful occupation as an ideal unmodified by higher ideals means selfishness and sordidness. That ideal of efficiency is tending to crowd out all opportunity for fostering the development of altruism and all the finer sentiments that are contributory to it.

The dollar-sign has become so thoroughly accepted as the sign of success and efficiency that whenever a successful man is mentioned, the automatic inquiry is likely to be: "How much is his salary?" "How many shares of stock does he own?" "How many railroads or corporations does he control?" The men who voluntarily engage in some occupation regardless of financial remuneration and solely because it offers opportunity for service are rare indeed. Witness this in the decreasing number who enter the ministry, teaching, and certain fields of authorship. Also witness the same tendency in the tons of driveling stuff that is published in magazines, books, and newspapers under the name of literature. This last certainly indicates efficiency in studying and catering to the perverted instincts of a certain reading public. But what about the soul growth and expansion of the writers and the intellectual and moral uplift of the readers?

While this is a great age of organization, have we yet grasped the real meaning of organization? Men frequently join a club, a lodge, or a society with the avowed idea of making the organization a means of their own advancement. They believe that belonging to many lodges and clubs may further their own cause financially, politically, or socially. Much in the same way many young men go to the high school and to college. They believe that somehow through the acquaintances made and the diploma secured-not always earned-their chances in business, or in politics, will be furthered. When a young man is offered a position, his first question is apt to be: "How much is there in it?" Not: "How much can I put into it?" "How much service can I render?" "How much can I do for which I am not paid?"

Similarly, we have conceived of national organization. That country is apt to be regarded as the greatest, the mightiest, which can achieve the most for itself, can most completely dominate all others

for its own selfish ends. We ask how extensive are its dominions, how strong its army, how efficient its navy, how rich its mines, how fertile its fields, how shrewd its men. Should we not ask instead: How fine are its schools, how justly governed its cities, how empty its jails and poorhouses, how unnecessary its hospitals, how justly its laws administered, how free from vice, graft, and corruption, how charitable and magnanimous its people? The fact that present-day civilization is so devoid of higher idealism; the fact that selfishness and its attendant phenomena of greed, graft, bribery, and corruption are so shamelessly apparent; the fact that our law-courts are so remiss in the administration of justice, that our jails and almshouses are so crowded; the fact that the dollar-sign is the chief mark of greatness; all these facts and hundreds more point unequivocally to the next necessary step in education.

Every means must be employed to instil worthy ideals of conduct and character; every possible attempt must be made to awaken dormant consciences, to arouse the nobler sentiments, and to inspire manly and womanly impulses. Emotions are the mainsprings of life. Properly develop the nobler emotions and all else will follow-even efficiency. Instead of following Huxley's definition that education should develop the mind into a clear, cold, logic engine, we should follow Milton, who says that education should fit the individual to perform skilfully, justly, and magnanimously all the arts of peace and all the arts of war.

The ideal must be shifted. The school must train not for efficiency alone, but it must be the instrument of liberal culture; the means of awakening and ministering to all the higher instincts; the means of refining the soul and purging it of all that is base and ignoble; the means of stimulating to the higher forms of unselfish social service.

We shall continue to teach the vocational subjects. We shall still need the technical and trade schools. But the ideal ends to be gained must be changed. The vocational courses should have some time for literature, history, sociology, art, and ethics. The lawyer, doctor, engineer, and tradesman all need these as much as they

do the technical branches. The great problems of the world which demand immediate solution, if our civilization is to endure, are not primarily questions demanding technical skill, but are social and moral questions. There is skill enough, scientific knowledge enough, available, if there were only courage enough, honesty enough, and unselfishness enough in applying the knowledge. No one of them demands any great amount of shrewdness or technical skill. A strict application of the ten commandments would solve almost every really great question confronting the world.

Should not the centre of gravity in the elementary and high school courses and elementary college courses be in those subjects that deal with these ideals for which I have contended; those subjects which do not prepare even remotely for the trades, crafts, or professions; those which have no relation to the development of efficiency in any specific occupation; but rather deal with the fundamental principles of human conduct? Conduct is the supreme test of life. Should not those subjects which promote ideal types of conduct have a larger place in the curricula?

Governor Gifford Pinchot recently said in his address to Pennsylvania school teachers, "To be successful, life needs to be more than practically efficient. It must be broad and fine as well. For that reason I am a strong believer in giving such time as can properly be devoted to them to the arts, including music, for I have come to realize the value of training not only for the work of life but for the great and beautiful things of life as well."

If the inculcation of worthy ideals is a more important educational end than "training for efficiency," then literature, history, poetry, music, and art, all of which deal with the emotions and uplifting ideals, are fundamental and not to be considered solely as an ornamental factor of education. Poetry, art, and music are just as important for the hewers of wood and drawers of water as for the men whose lives are spent in the realm of scholarship. Esthetic and moral inspiration are the only factors in their lives which make for contentment and happiness and tend to lift them to higher levels of work and happiness.

W

E flew from London to Paris. For the first time in my life, I travelled in an airplane. There is a daily service both ways, and there are passengers who take it as a matter of course. In our air-bus, some were reading newspapers, and some were asleep. My own sensations were different from what I had expected.

Our machine carried fourteen passengers, and an immense amount of baggage. When we arrived at Croydon, outside of London, where we were to take the plane, the weather turned sour-fog, rain, gloom. We were informed that we should have to wait, possibly not start at all. Thus, instead of soaring at noon, we did. not get away until two o'clock; the weather had shown no indication of improvement, but the telegraphic reports from the Channel were encouraging. Every one of us had been weighed, and assigned to a particular seat in the airship, with the idea of trimming her properly. Pieces of cotton were doled out, and our ears plugged, so that the noise of the machinery became a muffled and rather agreeable accompaniment.

I had supposed that we should soar into the air and skim along like a bird. But it seemed to me that we rose like a freighttrain, and plodded through the air with an elephantine motion. This was the only thing disconcerting; I wanted to be higher up and to fly faster. It seemed to me-it still so seems-incredible that such an enormously heavy mass of machinery and perishable freight could wallow along through the atmosphere without crashing to the ground. Why should we stay up at

all?

The ordinary time consumed in a flight from London to Paris is two hours and a half; we took three hours and forty minutes. Our height never exceeded fifteen hundred feet, and our speed never went over eighty miles an hour, which, in an airplane, is slow. The continuous bad

weather was the cause of our leisurely progress. We were in fog and rain the whole time, so that horizontally we could see almost nothing and I wondered how the pilot could see ahead fifty yards; but vertically the view was perfect, and every detail of the English and French landscape was crystal clear. The English country is surpassingly beautiful envisaged from aloft; the villages look as clean as if they had been manicured; and during our flight over the Channel, I knew what Tennyson meant when, in his description of the eagle, he wrote:

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls.

We had a rather violent head wind, and as the sea was white, it was evidently rough; but, looking down from fifteen hundred feet, the waves were flattened into wrinkles. The whole journey was an experience I would not have missed for anything; but I still cannot understand why that mass, containing tons and tons of weight, remained in the air. I am, however, glad that it did.

Instead of arriving at Paris in daylight, we arrived in the rainy evening; and even so, it was an hour later than I had expected, as France was still on daylightsaving time. England had gone back to winter time at the equinox, September 21; France held on until October 4. London Times expressed the hope that in 1925 London would not return to sun time until later; and indeed it is a mistake to give up daylight saving time before the middle of October. One has broad daylight at six o'clock in the morning, while the precious afternoon is sadly foreshortened. Daylight-saving time, earnestly advocated by Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, is a blessing to the vast majority of people.

Yesterday we motored out to Chartres, to see the cathedral for the fifth time, and also to see if I cared to revise my nomina

tion of the plain tower for the Ignoble Prize. We were fortunate enough to have sunshine, a rare thing in northern France between October and May; and we had every opportunity to study the cathedral, without and within. I came to it with a fresh mind, as eleven years had passed since I last saw it; but I found my previous impressions abundantly confirmed. The interior, with its marvellous stained glass, is still to me the most impressive of all the churches I have seen anywhere; but that plain tower, before which the artists, architects, and guide-books fall down and worship, is to me without significance. There are plenty of ordinary steeples in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that are just as good. Once more, therefore, I repeat that the plain tower of Chartres Cathedral is entitled to the Ignoble Prize.

In thinking over the plays I saw in London last month, only two made any deep impression. Of course September is out of the season; yet in London, and with so many theatres in activity, such a residuum is small. Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" I enjoyed even more than in New York; but whether this was because it was better done, or merely because it was the second time, I hesitate to say. Such a play ought to improve with every visit; that has been my invariable experience with first-rate dramas. Still, I am inclined to think the London performance was superior. In spite of the fact that a truly great author is more likely to be right than any critic of his work, I feel more and more certain that the Epilogue is a mistake and never should have been acted or published. I am glad to say that two of Shaw's foremost contemporaries feel even more certain about this than I. Very fine as "Saint Joan" is, I am a little surprised at the rapturous acclaim it received from the professional theatrical critics in London. Never before had he had such a good press. It is almost universally called a work of genius-which it assuredly is-and its author's masterpiece, which I doubt.

I counsel every one interested in the theatre, in the life and times of Joan of Arc, and in the extraordinary personality of her latest biographer, to buy and read

Shaw's play and preface. It is curious that he, who has always hated romance, should have selected so romantic a heroine; but those who, on seeing the play, had imagined a new and different Bernard Shaw, ought to find, on reading the preface, that he is the same man. It is partly imagination, partly perversity, and partly hatred of modern medical science that account both for his sympathetic attitude toward the Maid and for his defense of her executioners. He believes that the mystical twentieth century explanation of Joan is nearer the truth than the sceptical nineteenth century attitude. Perhaps the following extract from his preface marks Shaw's farthest advance in religion as distinguished from ethics.

But that there are forces at work which use individuals for purposes far transcending the purpose of keeping these individuals alive and prosperous and respectable and safe and happy in the middle station in life, which is all any good by the fact that men will, in the pursuit of knowlbourgeois can reasonably require, is established edge and of social readjustments for which they will not be a penny the better, and are indeed often many pence the worse, face poverty, indeath... the simplest French peasant who befamy, exile, imprisonment, dreadful hardship, and lieves in apparitions of celestial personages to favored mortals is nearer to the scientific truth about Joan than the Rationalist and Materialist down a girl who saw saints and heard them talkhistorians and essayists who feel obliged to set ing to her as either crazy or mendacious. And which is the healthier mind? the saintly mind or the monkey gland mind? Does not the that it is no longer our Academy pictures that present cry of Back to the Middle Ages mean are intolerable, but our credulities that have not the excuse of being superstitions, our cruelties that have not the excuse of barbarism, our perseour shameless substitution of successful swindlers cutions that have not the excuse of religious faith, and scoundrels and quacks for saints as objects of worship, and our deafness and blindness to the calls and visions of the inexorable power that made us, and will destroy us if we disregard it?

The only other play in London worth seeing is "The Farmer's Wife," by Eden Phillpotts. I had never thought of Phillpotts as a playwright, but only as an amazingly prolific novelist, who wrote three or four books every year. These were chiefly studies in Dartmoor characters, but latterly he has exhibited his ingenuity in the composition of mystery tales, with a complexity rivalling that of Wilkie Collins. "The Farmer's Wife" at once gives its author a place among con

temporary English dramatists. It is a brilliant comedy, full of humor, and so true to life that although it is extremely local, its persons are instantly recognizable by any one who knows anything of village or country customs either in England or in America. It is playing steadily to a capacity house, and may be seen in New York also with the Coburns.

Somerset Maugham's "Our Betters," which is in its second year on the London stage, is, like most of its author's dramatic work, neither good nor bad; it seemed to me a rather faint echo of Oscar Wilde. It is, of course, flippant and cynical, but so superficial that its philosophy is not of consequence. Mr. Maugham apparently uses the stage as a pleasant means of livelihood, reserving his serious efforts for novel-writing.

"The Sport of Kings," by the genial Ian Hay, who is a prime favorite in America, is farce, a series of absurd and rather amusing situations, with no pretence to anything more. But I confess I was sadly disappointed in a so-called comedy, "To Have the Honour," written by A. A. Milne. I had so keenly enjoyed two of his pieces, "Mr. Pim Passes By," and "The Dover Road," that I supposed Mr. Milne could not be dull if he tried. The first act of "To Have the Honour" was so insufferably stupid that I did not wait for the second and third. How such a piece came to be accepted and mounted will forever remain a mystery.

Late September is a bad time in London, for the interiors of all buildings, theatres, and trains, are much too cold for comfort, and yet the calendar is not sufficiently advanced to obtain artificial heat. Every one seems to follow the example of the terrible father of Eugénie Grandet, and light no fires until a certain date, regardless of the temperature. I wore my overcoat throughout every performance I attended at the theatres; but something happened at the Royalty Theatre which is so surprising that it ought to be recorded. The auditorium resembled the others in being admirably adapted for cold storage; but in addition, this had an icy draught that hit the back of the neck with precision. As soon as the first act was over, I hastened to the box office, complained of the draught, and the

girl on duty replied that she would immediately telephone somebody or other, and have it stopped. I thanked her, but of course did not for a moment dream that anything would really happen. Now as a matter of fact, in a pair of minutes the draught absolutely ceased. It is almost the first time in my life when I have known a complaint to produce a definite result.

The play was a revival of Arnold Bennett's diverting "Great Adventure, taken from his novel, "Buried Alive.” The word "wigwam" is used twice, and both times was pronounced with the second syllable rhyming with "ham." In 1912 I heard Bennett's greatest success, "Milestones," written in collaboration with Edward Knoblock, and I remember in that play hearing "wigwam" pronounced thus curiously. In the course of twelve years so alert a person as Mr. Bennett should have learned the correct pronunciation.

I

In a few weeks "The Great Adventure" is to give place to a new play by John Galsworthy, called "Old English." wish I could have stayed in London to see it. Mr. Galsworthy told me it was taken from one of his short stories, "The Stoic."

Before this number of SCRIBNER'S appears, Barrie's "Mary Rose" will be published, and we shall have an opportunity to study his stage directions and get at the heart of that mystery. The drama made such a powerful and permanent impression on my mind that I can truthfully say there is no forthcoming book anywhere whose appearance I await with such eager expectation. Barrie did not tell me whether or not he would ever complete "Shall We Join the Ladies?" which, given as a one-act play, made such a sensational success in London; but he did say that he had originally intended to write it in four acts, which disposes of the oft-heard assertion to the contrary.

Talk about the casualties of war! During a Zeppelin raid on London, there were gathered together in an upper room one night Thomas Hardy, Shaw, Galsworthy, Barrie, Arnold Bennett, and a few others; by the dim light of one candle, these men sat on the floor and held such conversation as I can only imagine. Of course they had an interesting experience, but