THE BATTALION.
9
open to any and all the moulding-, shaping- processes which
in their experience they have found effectual.
I do not know how the idea has orig-inated and been fos
tered in so man}- young- heads, that school-life is a coercive
process on the part of teacher to be met by as stubborn a
resistence as possible on the part of pupil, that some how
or other education is the resultant of force on the one hand
applied to resistance on the other.
That almost irresponsible guard as he sits with loaded
gun upon the railroad embankment and watches every
movement of the scowling, mad, sweating convict-gang in
the ditch beneath him, presents no parallel to the work
here in progress.
The Spanish colonies have just finished a three hun
dred years’ schooling in the kind of oppression which means
material wealth of the nabob wrung from the taxed and
burdened peon. This institution with its endowment of
governmental and state encouragement, of forefathers’
patriotism, of future citizens hedged in by parents’ prayers
and hopes, of men whose sympathies are with the evolution
of intellig-ent young manhood, I say, this institution is not
modeled after that Spanish school. Compare it rather with
that enthusiastic co-operation between g-overnment and
people which during- the last four months brought into
training as by magic nearly 200,000 volunteers who have
astonished the world by their willingness to serve and suf
fer hardship no less than by their daring- achievements on
land and sea.
What we are after is a noble aim, called in my text the
truth (ton logon), inducing the fullest co-operation between