We see that it is the destiny of California to solve great problems in agriculture and in manufactures. You will solve the problem that deals with irregularities in water supply. The arid regions to the east of you, stretching for 1,500 miles, furnish one part of this problem, while your most immediate problem lies in the sequence of wet and dry seasons, each separated in such a way that the one does not aid the other except by the device of storing up the water of the rainy season for irrigation of the crops that are to grow in the dry season. You are collecting a body of knowledge as to the proper amounts of water to use in producing the various crops; and you are using the new discoveries as to the introduction of nitric acid into the soil by means of the microbe that feeds on the roots of leguminous plants.

I am proud of our national Department of Agriculture and of the laboratories connected with its several bureaus. Its policy re-enforces the men who have genius for this line of research and helps to organize their individual researches into a united endeavor. Such men as your Burbank and his disciples-magic workers in biology-are thus multiplied and made more influential thruout wide circles of agricultural experiment.

One may predict that you will soon have the cactus bearing a new sort of peach, cherry, pear, or plum fruit with something of the fig in its nature, and after that even the sagebrush will have its turn of developing into garden vegetables of surprising excellence and abundance.

When I first began to know of maps of the United States, in the period before the Mexican War of 1844-48, we used to see the words "Great American Desert" covering the western mountain division of the United States and extending to the Pacific Ocean. It was not realized then that the prophecy of Holy Writ "The desert shall blossom as the rose" would be in prospect of applying to the entire Great American Desert within the century.

There is a perpetual degeneracy going on in agricultural plants when moved beyond their line of best climate. The garden vegetables prized for their sweet juices, their sugar and starch, lose one of these elements and grow, in their stead, woody fiber when carried into warmer climates. There is a greater development of the husks and hulls and shells and stringy fibers in place of succulent and highly flavored vegetable tissues. Your California biologists are in a way of discovering how all this happens and, what is better, they will discover how to restore and how to preserve the most excellent qualities of vegetables and fruits. The effects of your specializing in the biology of fruits and vegetables will then reach far beyond your borders, and tendencies to degeneracy will be checked in the South and the East, as well as the opposite kinds of degeneracy which develop in the cold of the extreme northern sections.

California will also solve the problem of manufacturing by transfer of power from your mountain streams for long distances. It will add new industrial devices in the arts as well as in agriculture. Just as California has developed into an important art the preservation of the most delicate and

perishable of fruits, all of which is managed so efficiently that cherries go in boxes for four thousand miles, into moist climates, and do not decay, but only dry up after weeks of storage; so these other important arts will arise here and be perfected by men and women who are now boys and girls attending your schools.

The education of the directive power for this great work in the world is progressing in your schools in its first beginnings. It will prevail more and We are glad to know the teachers who are to do the training. We thank you for your cordial welcome.

more.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

WHAT CAN THE SCHOOLS DO TO AID THE PEACE

MOVEMENT?

NATHAN C. SCHAEFFER, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, PENNSYLVANIA

The greatest problem of the twentieth century is the boy-with one exception-the girl. As soon as the girl takes up the study of history, she begins to wish that she had been born a boy. Her textbook magnifies the achievements of men and devotes very little space to the deeds of women. Gradually she reaches the conviction that everything great and heroic belongs to the other sex, that life is not worth living unless one can attain military glory, and that her greatest misfortune is to have been born a girl.

The boy is apt to form similar ideals from the textbooks on history and the methods of teaching the subject. The names of admirals and generals, the battles they fought and the victories they won, the causes and the effects of the wars in which they were engaged, constitute a very large part of the material of instruction. The examination questions which are supposed to emphasize the most important portions of the school curriculum, bristle with wars and the things of war. The boy loves power and admires every exhibition of personal and national strength; he admires the heroes whose names are immortalized upon the pages of history; he gradually conceives the notion that the wearing of a uniform, the carrying of a sword or a gun, the shedding of blood, and the acquisition of military renown, are essential to a life worth living.

It seems to me that our textbooks, our examination, and our instruction should glorify the arts of peace above the art of war. In other words, history should be taught from a more rational point of view. Whilst it would be wrong to minimize the sacrifices and services of the army and the navy, it will nevertheless be wise to emphasize the victories of peace above the victories of war, and to teach history in such a way that the pupil will write the name of the poet, the orator, the artist, the inventor, the educator, the jurist, the statesman, the philanthropist in a place at least as conspicuous in the temple

of fame as that occupied by the name of the victorious general or the successful admiral.

How can this be accomplished? In the first place, let us instill proper ideals of life and of heroism. The pupil can be led to see that Pasteur, the scientist, has done more for humanity than Napoleon, the destroyer of thousands; that Carnegie, the philanthropist, has done more for civilization than the admiral who sinks a hostile fleet; that the men who by experiments upon their own bodies showed how yellow fever is transmitted and can be prevented were as great heroes as any soldiers that ever faced a cannon's mouth; that the woman who serves in the hospital as a nurse displays as much heroism as the officer who serves his country in time of war; and that in the sight of God the drying of a tear is more than shedding seas of gore. As soon as the girl realizes that a life worth living does not turn upon fame or fortune or official position, nor even upon science and literature, but upon the personal relations which human beings sustain to one another and to their Creator-as soon as she grasps the truth that it is in the domain of personal relations where woman truly reigns as queen, she grows proud of her sex and no longer wishes that she had been born a boy.

In the next place, patriotism should never be taught so as to make it the meanest of all the virtues. It is possible to emphasize the maxim, "My Country, Right or Wrong," to such an extent that the citizen will resort to anything base and contemptible for the sake of furthering the material interests of his country. Rulers and governments hesitate to begin an unpopular war. Our teaching of history should create the kind of public sentiment that will make it unpopular, if not impossible, for a ruler or a government to wage war except for the maintenance of justice, law, and order among the nations, especially among the partially civilized tribes in distant portions of the globe.

Whilst the teacher is inculcating proper ideals of patriotism, heroism, and public service, the pupil can be taught to despise not only the bully who is ever anxious to pick a quarrel with weaker companions, but also the nation that is ever ready to go to war at the expense of weaker nations. Both teacher and pupil should distinguish between the different kinds of war. First, there is the war for tribute. No nation can now afford to carry on war for blood money under the guise of exacting a war indemnity. The second is the war for booty and plunder, such as the wars carried on by the robber barons during the Middle Ages. Third, there is the war for the gratification of personal ambition, such as the wars which the first Napoleon was continually waging. The fourth is the war for territorial aggrandizement. Of this kind of war our country has not always been guiltless. No teacher in the classroom and no orator on memorial day or the Fourth of July hits the mark if he glorifies or in any way excuses any one of these four kinds of war.

There are two kinds of war for which more can be said. One of these is the war for principle, of which the American Revolution was a type. The other is a war in behalf of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the defenceless,

like the Spanish-American war. In dealing with these two kinds of war it is well to point out both sides of the dispute and to show how war can be avoided by the peaceful method of arbitration. How well-posted we all are upon every war that our people have waged; how little we know of the two hundred and fifty international disputes which have been settled by the peaceful method of arbitration; and of the fourty-four treaties, some between leading nations, like England and France, for the settlement of their disputes in whole or in part by the use of arbitration. How frequently we discuss the Monroe Doctrine which has brought us again and again to the brink of war; how seldom we speak of the arrangement made during Monroe's administration for the limitation of armaments along our Canadian boundary-an arrangement that has secured peace between the United States and Great Britain in spite of all the acute disputes which have arisen since the War of 1812. How few people know the significance of The Hague Court, for whose sittings Andrew Carnegie is building a palace to cost a million and a half of dollars.

The teaching of history can be made to culminate in the proper observance of the eighteenth of May and of Washington's birthday. The teachers of France have resolved to observe these days by appropriate exercises, and the schools of America will do well to follow the example of the Third Republic. The publications of the American Peace Society furnish abundant material at small expense for the proper observance of the eighteenth of May-the day on which the delegates to the first Hague Conference assembled a day which certainly marked an epoch in the world's history. In the not distant future this day will be as universally observed as Arbor Day and the festival days of the church year. Some of the colleges now observe Washington's birthday in such a way as to strengthen the sentiment for peace and justice in dealing with other nations. Several years ago at the Mohonk Lake Conference Chancellor McCracken pointed out that the most popular textbook on international law devotes more space to the conduct of nations in time of war than to the conduct of international affairs in time of peace, whilst not one page is devoted to the ways in which nations may avoid war. Since that meeting a movement for the study of international arbitration has been inaugurated in most of our colleges. Just as the light which first illumines the mountain tops gradually reaches the valleys, so the light which the higher institutions are now beginning to disseminate will gradually illumine the teaching of history in the lower grades of schools.

We hear much of the emancipation of the high school from the dominating influence of the college. In the direction of fraternities, festivities, athletics, and courses of study, there may be room for change, but I hope that at no distant day the kind of history which our colleges now teach and which emphasizes the movements for the uplifting of the masses will replace the drum and trumpet sort of history which eventuates in hatred of redcoats, distrust of other nations, and a species of patriotism that is the meanest of all the virtues.

Peace has become so great a Shibboleth that the introduction of rifle practice into the public schools is now advocated as a peace measure.

The experience of our recent wars [it is held] has pointed out that, while there is no difficulty in case of war in getting all the volunteers that the country requires, and they can be given a reasonable amount of drill in a few weeks, it takes them a long time to learn to shoot, and that unless they can shoot accurately, they are of little value as soldiers. If, however, the young men who are graduating from our high schools in the different states should be skilled riflemen, the country can rest content with a small standing-army, knowing that in case of war it can put into the field at short notice a force of volunteers whose skill in rifle shooting will make them to be fully the equal of any army which may be brought against them. The system is, therefore, a great factor for national peace.

As a teacher from the state which William Penn founded, I must put a big interrogation point after this theory. Whenever anything goes wrong in the life of the nation, people look to the school for a remedy. If the reports in the daily papers are correct, there were 6,258 desertions from the army last year, and out of a total of 24,083 enlistments not more than 8,848 were re-enlistments. The invention of smokeless powder, machine guns, and modern explosives, and service in tropical countries have robbed the occupation of the soldier of its former attractiveness. The fact that boys at the age of thirteen can learn to shoot with marvelous accuracy should be correlated with the fact that at the same age, and even earlier, boys can be taught all sorts of breakneck acrobatics; no one would, on account of the skill which may thus be acquired, be justified in advocating the introduction of either acrobatics or rifle practice into the curriculum of our public schools. There is a limitation to the kinds of skill which a human being may acquire, and the development of skill in these directions interferes seriously with the development of skill in other and more useful lines. The development of skill in shooting is desirable on the part of those who join the army or the state constabulary; but if during a strike every striker were a skilled rifleman, the difficulties in maintaining order would be infinitely multiplied. It was, therefore, a source of gratification to learn from the secretary of war that no scheme for the inauguration of a policy to establish a system of rifle practice thruout the schools of the country is at present under consideration by the War Department.

At this time three great meetings are in progress. Delegates from every civilized nation are in session at The Hague for the purpose of lessening the evils and the frequency of war and of promoting the use of arbitration as a means for the settlement of international disputes. On the shores of the Atlantic the Jamestown Exposition advertises the greatest military and naval display the world has ever seen in time of peace. On the shores of the Pacific, in the city of "the angels," the association which represents the largest body of educators in the world has met to discuss the latest problems in education. Shall we plant ourselves on the side of peace or of war? Will the advocacy of peace raise a generation of weaklings? Has any one ever dared to call William Penn a weakling? He was as brave and courageous as his father,