schmerz as real as the Weltschmerz that Goethe discovered. Our tenders of machines are being starved in their souls; and while there may be sedatives for that malady, there is no specific. That seems to me the root of social unrest in America, and it is probably equally true in Europe. Under our political and social controls, in a people naturally robust and hopeful in spirit, the sickness may not run its course. Though half our mechanics talk radicalism, they vote with the others for Harding, play baseball in our parks, and get some relief and encouragement out of being literate citizens of a republic whose evolution tends, however slowly, toward the interests of the masses. But what will this chronic work-pain drive other breeds to do - breeds that get no relief out of sport and voting? Well, to cite the shining example, it seems to have poisoned Russia's industrial workers against the only system of industry under which industry functions profitably in our day; the Communists of Russia come from her few industrial towns. Signs of similar explosions are not lacking in Japan. No matter how shops are organized, no matter how profits are divided, this fraying of nerves in industry continues. Industry may stir temporarily the simple folk of Mandalay and Peshawur; but can they stand the shock any better than the Amerind withstood the white man's methods and the white man's whiskey? Modern industry is strong drink; those who have lived long with it, despite partial immunity born of experience, are none too happy; and those less experienced dally with it at the risk of their health, customs, general effectiveness, and political stability. III Viewing from these angles the possibility of spreading industrialism, a tre mendous dilemma presents itself. On the one hand, the economic forces that spread industrialism outward from its English inception are still operative, and more vigorous than before. To the constant of self-interest is added a heightened state-interest flowing from huge debts. These converging interests now have tools at their disposal which admit to efficient production breeds of cheap men not hitherto available as industrial workers. These dynamic forces are not to be denied their trial of strength. On the other hand, peoples about to be introduced to industrialism must overcome grave social and political inhibitions before they cut down materially the demand for the white man's goods, and so restrict his influence in the world. These contrary forcesone set positive, the other negative; one the essence of progress, the other the essence of conservatism are bound to do battle with one another on the world stage. Upon the outcome depends the future of terrestrial society. Alarm as to the outcome has been sounded vociferously enough; and while the warnings may be more strident than the dangers are imminent, still the outlook calls for the highest statesmanship. The trial period, while the old and new do battle in Asia, is sure to be an era of extreme nervousness in international relations. During this period the white nations must strive toward a genuine solidarity, at the very time when their traders and governments are forced by powerful economic motives to cut into each other's markets. At a time, too, when rankling hate persists, and statecraft is still under the shadow of chauvinism. Any statesman who does not make an effort to overcome these difficulties deserves ill of posterity; because the situation is one in which peace must be labored for, and of which war is the logical outcome. There can be no durable peace, and no effective white solidarity, so long as the coal-and-iron states continue treading the path of economic competition toward another Armageddon. A sword is suspended over civilization, and that sword can be sheathed only by such a reorientation of industrialism as will permit the aggressive nationalism it fosters to die of inanition. Much may be done by international agreement, with force back of the agreement; more may be done by the forward spirits in each industrial society forcing into public attention these internal adjustments necessary to bring social and political evolution into line with industrial evolution. The more energy goes into internal developments, the less will press outward to complicate international relations. There is plenty of work for all governments to do at home, before their populations recover their pre-war trust in governments. Every alert man or woman recognizes that the masses are critical of governments in this year of grace. The conviction is growing that the war was of economic origin. Men are no longer willing to turn out war as a by-product of goods-on machines. Since a prime source of belligerency is goods-competition, sovereignty has become a matter of control over machines as well as over men. That is the direction in which competent governments must move; and those which fail to keep step will possess no valid reason for existence in the automatic-machine age. The peoples of the earth look to governments to set up a moral control over machine use; and this instinctive turning to the state for relief is sound to the core, since states are the only groupings of humanity strong enough to harness the Iron Man to the chariot of human wellbeing. THE GUILD OF STUDENTS BY WILBUR C. ABBOTT Or all concerns of our democracy, most men agree, the chief is education in some form. From little red schoolhouse to Research Council, all of us at some time, some of us at all times, are brought in touch with it; and all of us at all times profess an interest in it. Our boys and girls go - or are sent to college or university. Thence they emerge like a recent 'graduate,' who, standing on the steps of the Commencement hall, waved his beribboned diplo halls, its faculty and president, had made him what he was. But he and his fellows knew that being a 'college man' was no mere membership in a fraternity of scholars. They knew that when, in future years, he foregathered with his kind in annual hilarity, he would not come to hear the latest word in chemistry or history from peripatetic 'faculty representatives,' but for reasons only remotely related to a common interest in the curriculum. Neither for president nor for faculty, nor for buildings, nor for courses, does our youth, of which he is a type, flock to institutions of higher education. Its education it accepts, eagerly or reluctantly, as the case may be; but for the majority it is the 'college life' which they and their parents crave. It is not easy to define a university; it seems to lie somewhere between an atmosphere and a factory. But for most of us it is a state of existence, peculiarly attractive to a certain class and age; a state in which buildings and faculty and mental training have a place, but not the whole, nor, frankly, to most men, the most important place. their own income, and evolved a system that challenges comparison with that of their academic superiors. They have, in truth, 'called a new world into existence, to redress the balance of the old'; they have created a real imperium in imperio, a student university — what would have been called, in older times, a guild of students. It is easy to say that this is the only too familiar phenomenon of outside, or extra-curriculum, activities, long one of the chief concerns of deans and faculties and even presidents. It is easier still to say that calling this a student guild, much less a student university, is but another way of saying what everybody knows, another startling discovery of the wholly obvious. For this is, in many respects, the best-known feature of American education, even in the non-academic world. It has been the subject of long and dull discussions in public, and longer, though not so dull, discussions in private. We heard long ago from a distinguished college president as he then was the danger of allowing the side-shows to swallow up the circus. Yet the very fact of considering this phenomenon as a side-show indicates how little the problem is appreciated by minds which still consider the advice to undergraduates, 'Don't let your studies interfere with your education,' as humorous. And no one familiar with common conversation among undergraduates and alumni in their natural state will make that mistake. Let us consider the matter from another point of view than that involved in calling this an outside interest. The problem of student activities outside of the curriculum is not new. At all times since universities began, students have lived a great part of their lives beyond the view of faculties. There have always been student organizations, for pleasure, for profit, and for protection; there are such organizations now in other lands. The first university of which we have any adequate account, the University of Bologna, was, in fact, a guild of students, which employed its own professors, hired its own buildings, and managed its own affairs. Our modern guild of students has not, indeed, reached the point where, as in Bologna, it has succeeded in 'reducing the Masters to an incredible degree of servitude.' Not only does there yet remain to our faculties that sole prerogative of the Bolognese professors, 'the one function and only one over which the Doctors to the last retained an exclusive control,'that of examining and conferring degrees, but they still maintain those disciplinary powers denied to their unfortunate Bolognese predecessors, into whose lecture-rooms 'the idea of discipline never entered at all.' It is still measurably true now as then, that 'opposition to the Professors formed no part of the original raison d'être of the [student] universities.' The modern student guild, like its forerunner, as yet claims 'no authority over the Doctors or the control of strictly Academical matters' - with some modifications, perhaps, as to attendance and the exigencies of its own public exercises! And like the Bolognese guild, it still has 'little or nothing to do with the Studium.' Moreover, it is perhaps not so true now as it was then that the 'jealousy of the Professors arose simply (so far as appears) from the fact that the students were attempting to do for themselves what the Professors claimed to do for them.' They cannot, perhaps, in the very nature of the new student guild's ambitions and desires; for the mediaval student guild was chiefly concerned with the cultivation of the mind, and the modern guild has wider scope than this. The older body employed its instructors to lecture in philosophy and rhetoric and theology and law; and whatever charges may be brought against its later counterpart, this will not be found among them. Nor have we reached, as yet, the point where, as at Bologna, the students acquired a complete control over their professors, and to a large extent usurped the powers elsewhere exercised by the professional body.' Yet, like its ancient analogue, the twentieth-century American phenomenon is no less a 'wholly new departure in the history of education distinct from anything which preceded it.' To us it seems the simplest, most obvious, even inevitable, of developments. Of casual visitors from other lands it fills the mind with wonder, not unmixed with awe. None the less, strange or familiar, like its prototype of Bologna, 'it is not difficult to explain the genesis of the new creation if we bear in mind the character of the environment wherein it grew up.' That environment may be measured in three terms the initiative and organizing capacity of American youth, the desires of American parents, and the conditions in American colleges fifty years ago. Those institutions, excellent of their kind, were, in the main, dominated by ecclesiastical influence. They provided a classical education of the old school, admirable in its way, if to our eyes somewhat limited in its range and appeal. They paid small attention. to the graces and amenities of life, and less to the social and physical development of the undergraduate. There was a plentiful lack of those facilities for comfort and amusement which we now regard as essential to our welfare. A boy was sent to college to improve his mind, and incidentally to gain contact with his fellows. The literary and debating societies, the casual outdoor sports, the occasional social event, were the sum of his extra-curriculum activities, together with such loosely organized clubs as he contrived to form. In some measure this was the expression of the more restrained, if not more sober, character of American life. It is peculiarly typified in the high hats, long coats, and hirsute adornment still reflected in those photographs of earlier classes which entertain the present undergraduate. II But America changed, and her colleges with her. There arose a class of newly rich who regarded the college rather as a place to acquire social polish and position, a knowledge of the world and of society, than as essentially a means of mental discipline. And many who were neither new nor rich altered their conceptions of life and preparation for it. Take a handful of paternal expressions of what the college is supposed to do. 'I want my son,' writes one father, 'to learn how to dress and behave, and make friends of the right sort.' 'I should like,' writes another, 'to have my son learn how to meet people and form acquaintances which will be of advantage to him in after life.' Another, still more frankly, voices what is doubtless in many minds, confessing that he wants his boy to 'join a good society, make the football team, and live like a gentleman.'-'Education by contact,' to 'know men,' to 'get the most out of his college life,''social training' - these are the commonest of expressions nowadays.. They are the natural desires of mankind. Two centuries ago, some visionary in a New Haven town-meeting suggested that more attention be given to arithmetic in the school; but 'he was speedily suffocated by a substitute measure proposed, that the youth be instructed in points of manners, there being a great fault in that respect, as some exprest.' Times change, and manners, but the desire to have youth trained in the graces, to be 'socialized' in all senses, survives both time and change. And the college, through the student guild, has thus conformed to that desire. "To ride a horse, shoot with the bow, keep clean, and tell the truth' - these, the oldest educational requirements, are not out of date, save as the instruments have somewhat changed. The 'friendships formed at Yale,' or Harvard, or Michigan, or Emory and Henry - are these not as enduring as the mental discipline, and of more ultimate value? And how shall these be attained? How train men in laboratory or by lectures to meet their fellows and their fellows' sisters? These are some of the reasons why the undergraduates have formed their guilds. They began their social education with those willing instructors common to us all, the tailor, the haberdasher, the dancing-master, the theatre, the teacher of musical instruments, and their fellow men. They played some kind of ball, and less innocuous games of chance and skill; they formed debating clubs and boarding clubs and literary societies, and mingled as they could in social events. All these are as old as universities. And in America, some time before the middle of the nineteenth century, they turned to secret societies. There they parted company with most other nations, unless we may regard the German corps and Burschenschaften as a parallel. How greatly these 'fraternities' have grown, we know. They are numbered now by scores; their members by tens of thousands. A generation since, a distinguished Bostonian boasted that he could go from coast to coast and sleep each night in a different house owned by his college society. There is at least one organization now where he might sleep each night for at least two months in a different house; and no one familiar with the college world need have attention called to the increasingly luxurious |