Where Half The World Is Waking Up Part 23

It is universal education and modern machinery, far more than virgin resources, that have made America rich and powerful. Let her make haste then to learn this final lesson that the Orient teaches--the necessity of conserving in the fullest degree all the powers that have given us industrial supremacy: the power of the trained brain and the cunning hand reinforced by all the magic strength that we may get from our Briarean "Slave of the Lamp," modern machinery. We must thoroughly educate all our people. Was it not an Oriental prophet who wrote: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge?" In China only 1 per cent, of the people can now read and write, and the highest hope of the government is that 5 per cent, may be literate by 1917. In India only 5 per cent, can read and write. In j.a.pan for centuries past, the education of the common man has also been neglected, but she is now compelling every child to go into the schools, {273} and her industrial system will doubtless be revolutionized at a result.

In no case must we forget that education, if it is to be effective, must train for efficiency, must link itself with life and work, must be practical. I had thought of the movement for relating the school to industry as being confined to America and Europe. But when I landed in j.a.pan I found the educational authorities there as keenly alive to the importance of the movement as ours in America; in China I found that the old cla.s.sical system of education has been utterly abandoned within a decade; in the Philippines it was the boast of the Commissioner of Education that the elementary schools in the islands give better training for agriculture and industry than those in the United States; and in India the school authorities are earnestly at work upon the same problem.

Knowledge and tools must go hand in hand. If this has been important heretofore it is doubly important now that we must face in an ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hards.h.i.+p, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and racial readjustment.

THE END