of the tenements, when I read of the terrible ravages of tuberculosis in the same quarters, I can not but think that the city should provide wholesome food at the lowest possible cost in public school kitchens. To lay the legal burden of learning upon children whose blood is impoverished and whose digestion is impaired by insufficient or unwholesome feeding is not in accord with the boasted altruism of an advanced civilization or with the Divine command: Feed the hungry. Is this not also a subject for investigation by our National Council? And should it some day come to pass that men will look upon corruption in public and corporate life, such as of late we have seen exposed in New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis, with the same loathing with which they regard crime in private life, it will be when the schools are in earnest about teaching our young people the fundamental laws of ethics, that
The ten commandments will not budge,
And stealing still continues stealing.
But economic perils and racial differences are the teacher's opportunity. Here in this country are gathered the sons and daughters of all nations. Ours is the task not merely of teaching them our language and respect for our laws, but of imbuing them with the spirit of self-direction, our precious inheritance from the Puritans; the spirit of initiative which comes to its from the pioneers who subdued a continent to the uses of mankind;[1] and the spirit of cooperation which is symbolized by and embodied in the everlasting union of sovereign states to promote the common weal. And as, in my own city, I see the eagerness of foreigners to learn, and the skill and devotion of our teachers, I can not but think that we are overcoming our almost insurmountable difficulties.
There is perhaps no more striking moment in all history than that at which the Apostle Paul, standing on Mars Hill and pointing to the blue Ægean, the center of the then known world, proclaimed the new but eternal doctrine: God hath made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. Standing here as we do, on the border of the Atlantic Ocean, and beholding on the one side the dove of peace alighting from the hand of our President on the fields of carnage in the far east and on the other side the homes of peoples of all nationalities stretching from the Atlantic to the isles of the Pacific, under the protection of the American flag, may we not realize that we, as teachers, have a great part to perform in bringing a vast company to an understanding of the sublime truth that God has made all men one to dwell on the face of the earth—that their mission is not to defraud and to slay, but each to do his best for himself and to help his fellows.
- ↑ Münsterberg, The Americans, Chapter I. and XI.
